DBMS > dBASE vs. Microsoft Access vs. PostgreSQL

System Properties Comparison dBASE vs. Microsoft Access vs. PostgreSQL

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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.)

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

with Apache Age
Spatial DBMS
Vector DBMS

with pgvector extension

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

Score	7.29
Rank	#47	Overall
	#30	Relational DBMS

Score	95.36
Rank	#13	Overall
	#9	Relational DBMS

Score	667.25
Rank	#4	Overall
	#4	Relational DBMS

Website

www.dbase.com

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

www.postgresql.org

Technical documentation

www.dbase.com/support/knowledgebase

developer.microsoft.com/en-us/access

www.postgresql.org/docs

Developer

Asthon Tate

Microsoft

PostgreSQL Global Development Group

www.postgresql.org/developer

Initial release

1979

1992

1989

1989: Postgres, 1996: PostgreSQL

Current release

dBASE 2019, 2019

1902 (16.0.11328.20222), March 2019

16.4, August 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Bundled with Microsoft Office

Open Source

BSD

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

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Implementation language

C++

Server operating systems

DOS

dBase Classic
Windows

dBase Pro

Windows

Not a real database server, but making use of DLLs

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

none

The IDE can access other DBMS or ODBC-sources.

ADO.NET
DAO
ODBC
OLE DB

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

Supported programming languages

dBase proprietary IDE

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

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java

JDBC
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
Tcl

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

The IDE can access stored procedures in other database systems.

yes

since Access 2010 using the ACE-engine

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

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

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

none

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

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.

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

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