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

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

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Microsoft Access combines a backend RDBMS (JET / ACE Engine) with a GUI frontend for data manipulation and queries.

The Access frontend is often used for accessing other datasources (DBMS, Excel, etc.)

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

Widely used open source RDBMS

Developed as objectoriented DBMS (Postgres), gradually enhanced with 'standards' like SQL

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

with object oriented extensions, e.g.: user defined types/functions and inheritance. Handling of key/value pairs with hstore module.

Secondary database models

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS

with Apache Age
Spatial DBMS
Vector DBMS

with pgvector extension

DB-Engines Ranking measures the popularity of database management systems
Trend Chart

Score	95.91
Rank	#13	Overall
	#9	Relational DBMS

Score	774.89
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	674.32
Rank	#4	Overall
	#4	Relational DBMS

Website

www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/access

www.microsoft.com/en-us/sql-server

www.postgresql.org

Technical documentation

developer.microsoft.com/en-us/access

learn.microsoft.com/en-US/sql/sql-server

www.postgresql.org/docs

Developer

Microsoft

PostgreSQL Global Development Group

www.postgresql.org/developer

Initial release

1992

1989

1989: Postgres, 1996: PostgreSQL

Current release

1902 (16.0.11328.20222), March 2019

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

16.4, August 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Bundled with Microsoft Office

commercial

restricted free version is available

Open Source

BSD

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

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Implementation language

C++

Server operating systems

Windows

Not a real database server, but making use of DLLs

Linux
Windows

FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
NetBSD
OpenBSD
OS X
Solaris
Unix
Windows

Data scheme

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

XML support

Some form of processing data in XML format, e.g. support for XML data structures, and/or support for XPath, XQuery or XSLT.

yes

specific XML-type available, but no XML query functionality.

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

but not compliant to any SQL standard

yes

standard with numerous extensions

APIs and other access methods

ADO.NET
DAO
ODBC
OLE DB

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
OLE DB
Tabular Data Stream (TDS)

ADO.NET
JDBC
native C library
ODBC
streaming API for large objects

Supported programming languages

C
C#
C++
Delphi
Java (JDBC-ODBC)
VBA
Visual Basic.NET

C#
C++
Delphi
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Visual Basic

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java

JDBC
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
Tcl

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

since Access 2010 using the ACE-engine

Transact SQL, .NET languages, R, Python and (with SQL Server 2019) Java

user defined functions

realized in proprietary language PL/pgSQL or with common languages like Perl, Python, Tcl etc.

Triggers

yes

since Access 2010 using the ACE-engine

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

tables can be distributed across several files (horizontal partitioning); sharding through federation

partitioning by range, list and (since PostgreSQL 11) by hash

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

none

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

Source-replica replication

other methods possible by using 3rd party extensions

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

Support to ensure data integrity after non-atomic manipulations of data

ACID

but no files for transaction logging

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

but no files for transaction logging

yes

In-memory capabilities

Is there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.

yes

User concepts

Access control

a simple user-level security was built in till version Access 2003

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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