DBMS > Microsoft Access vs. ObjectBox vs. Realm vs. SAP SQL Anywhere vs. SQLite

System Properties Comparison Microsoft Access vs. ObjectBox vs. Realm vs. SAP SQL Anywhere vs. SQLite

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.)

Lightweight, fast on-device database for IoT, Mobile and Embedded devices, persisting and synchronising objects and vectors

A DBMS built for use on mobile devices that’s a fast, easy to use alternative to SQLite and Core Data

RDBMS database and synchronization technologies for server, desktop, remote office, and mobile environments

Widely used embeddable, in-process RDBMS

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Object oriented DBMS
Vector DBMS

Document store

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Time Series DBMS

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

Score	93.76
Rank	#12	Overall
	#8	Relational DBMS

Score	1.08
Rank	#179	Overall
	#6	Object oriented DBMS
	#9	Vector DBMS

Score	7.18
Rank	#52	Overall
	#8	Document stores

Score	3.50
Rank	#81	Overall
	#44	Relational DBMS

Score	103.35
Rank	#10	Overall
	#7	Relational DBMS

Website

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

github.com/objectbox
objectbox.io

realm.io

www.sap.com/products/technology-platform/sql-anywhere.html

www.sqlite.org

Technical documentation

developer.microsoft.com/en-us/access

docs.objectbox.io

realm.io/docs

help.sap.com/docs/SAP_SQL_Anywhere

www.sqlite.org/docs.html

Developer

Microsoft

ObjectBox Limited

Realm, acquired by MongoDB in May 2019

SAP

formerly Sybase

Dwayne Richard Hipp

Initial release

1992

2017

2014

1992

2000

Current release

1902 (16.0.11328.20222), March 2019

4.0 (May 2024)

17, July 2015

3.46.1 (13 August 2024), August 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Bundled with Microsoft Office

Bindings are released under Apache 2.0

Apache License 2.0

Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Public Domain

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

Providers of DBaaS offerings, please contact us to be listed.

Implementation language

C++

C and C++

Server operating systems

Windows

Not a real database server, but making use of DLLs

Android
Any POSIX system
Docker
iOS
Linux
macOS
QNX
Windows

Android
Backend: server-less
iOS
Windows

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

server-less

Data scheme

yes

dynamic column types

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

yes, plus "flex" map-like types

yes

not rigid because of 'dynamic typing' concept.

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-92 is not fully supported

APIs and other access methods

ADO.NET
DAO
ODBC
OLE DB

Proprietary native API

ADO.NET
HTTP API
JDBC
ODBC

ADO.NET

inofficial driver
JDBC

inofficial driver
ODBC

inofficial driver

Supported programming languages

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

C
C++
Dart (Flutter)
Go
Java
Kotlin
Python
Swift

.Net
Java

with Android only
Objective-C
React Native
Swift

C
C#
C++
Delphi
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

Actionscript
Ada
Basic
C
C#
C++
D
Delphi
Forth
Fortran
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Lisp
Lua
MatLab
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
PL/SQL
Python
R
Ruby
Scala
Scheme
Smalltalk
Tcl

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

since Access 2010 using the ACE-engine

runs within the applications so server-side scripts are unnecessary

yes, in C/C++, Java, .Net or Perl

Triggers

yes

since Access 2010 using the ACE-engine

yes

Change Listeners

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

none

Data sync between devices allowing occasional connected databases to work completely offline

none

Source-replica replication

Database mirroring

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

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

via file-system locks

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

In-Memory realm

yes

User concepts

Access control

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

yes

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

More information provided by the system vendor

News

MongoDB Realm & Device Sync alternatives – ObjectBox
17 September 2024

Local AI – what it is and why we need it
11 September 2024

First on-device Vector Database (aka Semantic Index) for iOS
24 July 2024

Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) with vector databases: Expanding AI Capabilities
18 June 2024

The on-device Vector Database for Android and Java
29 May 2024

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