DBMS > Microsoft Access vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. searchxml vs. Spark SQL

System Properties Comparison Microsoft Access vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. searchxml vs. Spark SQL

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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

DBMS for structured and unstructured content wrapped with an application server

Spark SQL is a component on top of 'Spark Core' for structured data processing

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Native XML DBMS
Search engine

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	101.16
Rank	#11	Overall
	#8	Relational DBMS

Score	821.56
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	0.03
Rank	#390	Overall
	#7	Native XML DBMS
	#24	Search engines

Score	18.04
Rank	#33	Overall
	#20	Relational DBMS

Website

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

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

www.searchxml.net/category/products

spark.apache.org/sql

Technical documentation

developer.microsoft.com/en-us/access

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

www.searchxml.net/support/handouts

spark.apache.org/docs/latest/sql-programming-guide.html

Developer

Microsoft

informationpartners gmbh

Apache Software Foundation

Initial release

1992

1989

2015

2014

Current release

1902 (16.0.11328.20222), March 2019

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

1.0

3.5.0 ( 2.13), September 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Bundled with Microsoft Office

commercial

restricted free version is available

commercial

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

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Implementation language

C++

Scala

Server operating systems

Windows

Not a real database server, but making use of DLLs

Linux
Windows

Windows

Linux
OS X
Windows

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

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

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

but not compliant to any SQL standard

yes

SQL-like DML and DDL statements

APIs and other access methods

ADO.NET
DAO
ODBC
OLE DB

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

RESTful HTTP API
WebDAV
XQuery
XSLT

JDBC
ODBC

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

C++

most other programming languages supported via APIs

Java
Python
R
Scala

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

yes

on the application server

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

none

yes, utilizing Spark Core

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

none

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

yes

sychronisation to multiple collections

none

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

multiple readers, single writer

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

Domain, group and role-based access control at the document level and for application services

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