DBMS > dBASE vs. Microsoft Access vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. TypeDB vs. Weaviate

System Properties Comparison dBASE vs. Microsoft Access vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. TypeDB vs. Weaviate

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

dBase was one of the first databases with a development environment on PC's. Its latest version dBase V is still sold as dBase classic, which needs a DOS Emulation. The up-to-date product is dBase plus.

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

TypeDB is a strongly-typed database with a rich and logical type system and TypeQL as its query language

An AI-native realtime vector database engine that integrates scalable machine learning models.

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Graph DBMS
Relational DBMS

Often described as a 'hyper-relational' database, since it implements the 'Entity-Relationship Paradigm' to manage complex data structures and ontologies.

Vector DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	10.34
Rank	#44	Overall
	#28	Relational DBMS

Score	104.92
Rank	#11	Overall
	#8	Relational DBMS

Score	824.29
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	0.65
Rank	#234	Overall
	#20	Graph DBMS
	#107	Relational DBMS

Score	1.73
Rank	#143	Overall
	#5	Vector DBMS

Website

www.dbase.com

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

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

typedb.com

github.com/weaviate/weaviate
weaviate.io

Technical documentation

www.dbase.com/support/knowledgebase

developer.microsoft.com/en-us/access

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

typedb.com/docs

weaviate.io/developers/weaviate

Developer

Asthon Tate

Microsoft

Vaticle

Weaviate B.V.

Initial release

1979

1992

1989

2016

2019

Current release

dBASE 2019, 2019

1902 (16.0.11328.20222), March 2019

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

2.26.3, January 2024

1.19, May 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Bundled with Microsoft Office

commercial

restricted free version is available

Open Source

GPL Version 3, commercial licenses available

Open Source

commercial license available with Weaviate Enterprise

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

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Implementation language

C++

Java

Server operating systems

DOS

dBase Classic
Windows

dBase Pro

Windows

Not a real database server, but making use of DLLs

Linux
Windows

Linux
OS X
Windows

Data scheme

yes

yes, maps to GraphQL interface

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

string, int, float, geo point, date, cross reference, fuzzy references

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

all data objects are indexed in a semantic vector space (the Contextionary), all primitive fields are indexed

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

but not compliant to any SQL standard

yes

GraphQL is used as query language

APIs and other access methods

none

The IDE can access other DBMS or ODBC-sources.

ADO.NET
DAO
ODBC
OLE DB

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

gRPC protocol
TypeDB Console (shell)
TypeDB Studio (Visualisation software- previously TypeDB Workbase)

GraphQL query language
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Supported programming languages

dBase proprietary IDE

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

All JVM based languages
Groovy
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python
Scala

JavaScript / TypeScript
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

The IDE can access stored procedures in other database systems.

yes

since Access 2010 using the ACE-engine

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

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

Sharding

by using Cassandra

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

none

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

Multi-source replication

by using Cassandra

yes

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

by using Apache Kafka and Apache Zookeeper

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

substituted by the relationship feature

Transaction concepts

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

not for dBase internal data, but IDE does support transactions when accessing external DBMS

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

Access rights for users and roles

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

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

yes

at REST API level; other APIs in progress

API Keys
OpenID Connect Discovery

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

TypeDB is a polymorphic database with a conceptual data model, a strong subtyping...
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Weaviate is an open source vector database that is robust, scalable, cloud-native,...
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Competitive advantages

TypeDB provides a new level of expressivity, extensibility, interoperability, and...
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Flexible deployment - Free, open source or fully-managed cloud vector database service...
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Typical application scenarios

Life sciences : TypeDB makes working with biological data much easier and accelerates...
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As a database supporting the development of generative AI and semantic search applications...
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Key customers

All companies that have data.
» more

Market metrics

As of mid 2023: Over 2 million open source downloads 3500+ Weaviate Slack community...
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Licensing and pricing models

Apache f or language drivers, and AGPL and Commercial for the database server. The...
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Weaviate is open-source, and free to use. Weaviate is also available as a fully managed...
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