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DBMS > Microsoft Access vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. PostGIS

System Properties Comparison Microsoft Access vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. PostGIS

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines
NameMicrosoft Access  Xexclude from comparisonMicrosoft SQL Server  Xexclude from comparisonPostGIS  Xexclude from comparison
DescriptionMicrosoft Access combines a backend RDBMS (JET / ACE Engine) with a GUI frontend for data manipulation and queries. infoThe Access frontend is often used for accessing other datasources (DBMS, Excel, etc.)Microsofts flagship relational DBMSSpatial extension of PostgreSQL
Primary database modelRelational DBMSRelational DBMSSpatial DBMS
Secondary database modelsDocument store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS
Relational DBMS
DB-Engines Ranking infomeasures the popularity of database management systemsranking trend
Trend Chart
Score107.93
Rank#11  Overall
#8  Relational DBMS
Score845.81
Rank#3  Overall
#3  Relational DBMS
Score24.72
Rank#29  Overall
#1  Spatial DBMS
Websitewww.microsoft.com/­en-us/­microsoft-365/­accesswww.microsoft.com/­en-us/­sql-serverpostgis.net
Technical documentationdeveloper.microsoft.com/­en-us/­accesslearn.microsoft.com/­en-US/­sql/­sql-serverpostgis.net/­documentation
DeveloperMicrosoftMicrosoft
Initial release199219892005
Current release1902 (16.0.11328.20222), March 2019SQL Server 2022, November 20223.4.2, February 2024
License infoCommercial or Open Sourcecommercial infoBundled with Microsoft Officecommercial inforestricted free version is availableOpen Source infoGPL v2.0
Cloud-based only infoOnly available as a cloud servicenonono
DBaaS offerings (sponsored links) infoDatabase as a Service

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Implementation languageC++C++C
Server operating systemsWindows infoNot a real database server, but making use of DLLsLinux
Windows
Data schemeyesyesyes
Typing infopredefined data types such as float or dateyesyesyes
XML support infoSome form of processing data in XML format, e.g. support for XML data structures, and/or support for XPath, XQuery or XSLT.yesyes
Secondary indexesyesyesyes
SQL infoSupport of SQLyes infobut not compliant to any SQL standardyesyes
APIs and other access methodsADO.NET
DAO
ODBC
OLE DB
ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
OLE DB
Tabular Data Stream (TDS)
Supported programming languagesC
C#
C++
Delphi
Java (JDBC-ODBC)
VBA
Visual Basic.NET
C#
C++
Delphi
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Visual Basic
Server-side scripts infoStored proceduresyes infosince Access 2010 using the ACE-engineTransact SQL, .NET languages, R, Python and (with SQL Server 2019) Javauser defined functions
Triggersyes infosince Access 2010 using the ACE-engineyesyes
Partitioning methods infoMethods for storing different data on different nodesnonetables can be distributed across several files (horizontal partitioning); sharding through federationyes infobased on PostgreSQL
Replication methods infoMethods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodesnoneyes, but depending on the SQL-Server Editionyes infobased on PostgreSQL
MapReduce infoOffers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methodsnonono
Consistency concepts infoMethods to ensure consistency in a distributed systemImmediate ConsistencyImmediate Consistency
Foreign keys infoReferential integrityyesyesyes
Transaction concepts infoSupport to ensure data integrity after non-atomic manipulations of dataACID infobut no files for transaction loggingACIDACID
Concurrency infoSupport for concurrent manipulation of datayesyesyes
Durability infoSupport for making data persistentyes infobut no files for transaction loggingyesyes
In-memory capabilities infoIs there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.yesno
User concepts infoAccess controlno infoa simple user-level security was built in till version Access 2003fine grained access rights according to SQL-standardyes infobased on PostgreSQL

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More resources
Microsoft AccessMicrosoft SQL ServerPostGIS
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