DBMS > AlaSQL vs. Amazon CloudSearch vs. Amazon DynamoDB vs. Elasticsearch vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

System Properties Comparison AlaSQL vs. Amazon CloudSearch vs. Amazon DynamoDB vs. Elasticsearch vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

JavaScript DBMS library

A hosted search engine service by Amazon with the data stored in Amazons cloud

Hosted, scalable database service by Amazon with the data stored in Amazons cloud

A distributed, RESTful modern search and analytics engine based on Apache Lucene

Elasticsearch lets you perform and combine many types of searches such as structured, unstructured, geo, and metric

Globally distributed, horizontally scalable, multi-model database service

Primary database model

Document store
Relational DBMS

Search engine

Document store
Key-value store

Search engine

Document store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store
Wide column store

Secondary database models

Document store
Spatial DBMS
Vector DBMS

Spatial DBMS

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

Score	0.51
Rank	#256	Overall
	#40	Document stores
	#118	Relational DBMS

Score	1.81
Rank	#137	Overall
	#12	Search engines

Score	74.45
Rank	#17	Overall
	#3	Document stores
	#2	Key-value stores

Score	132.83
Rank	#7	Overall
	#1	Search engines

Score	27.71
Rank	#27	Overall
	#4	Document stores
	#2	Graph DBMS
	#3	Key-value stores
	#3	Wide column stores

Website

alasql.org

aws.amazon.com/cloudsearch

aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

www.elastic.co/elasticsearch

azure.microsoft.com/services/cosmos-db

Technical documentation

github.com/AlaSQL/alasql

docs.aws.amazon.com/cloudsearch

docs.aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/index.html

learn.microsoft.com/azure/cosmos-db

Developer

Andrey Gershun & Mathias R. Wulff

Amazon

Elastic

Microsoft

Initial release

2014

2012

2010

2014

Current release

8.6, January 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

MIT-License

commercial

free tier for a limited amount of database operations

Open Source

Elastic License

commercial

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

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

Implementation language

JavaScript

Java

Server operating systems

server-less, requires a JavaScript environment (browser, Node.js)

hosted

All OS with a Java VM

hosted

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free

Flexible type definitions. Once a type is defined, it is persistent

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

JSON types

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.

Secondary indexes

yes

all search fields are automatically indexed

yes

All search fields are automatically indexed

yes

All properties auto-indexed by default

SQL

Support of SQL

Close to SQL99, but no user access control, stored procedures and host language bindings.

SQL-like query language

APIs and other access methods

JavaScript API

HTTP API

RESTful HTTP API

Java API
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

DocumentDB API
Graph API (Gremlin)
MongoDB API
RESTful HTTP API
Table API

Supported programming languages

JavaScript

.Net
ColdFusion
Erlang
Groovy
Java
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

.Net
Groovy
Community Contributed Clients
Java
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

.Net
C#
Java
JavaScript
JavaScript (Node.js)
MongoDB client drivers written for various programming languages
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

JavaScript

Triggers

yes

by integration with AWS Lambda

yes

by using the 'percolation' feature

JavaScript

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

yes

automatic partitioning across Amazon Search Instance as required

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

none

yes

managed transparently by AWS

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

may be implemented via Amazon Elastic MapReduce (Amazon EMR)

ES-Hadoop Connector

with Hadoop integration

Integration with Hadoop/HDInsight on Azure*

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

none

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

can be specified for read operations

Eventual Consistency

Synchronous doc based replication. Get by ID may show delays up to 1 sec. Configurable write consistency: one, quorum, all

Bounded Staleness
Consistent Prefix
Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Consistency level configurable on request level
Session Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

yes

only for local storage and DOM-storage

ACID

ACID across one or more tables within a single AWS account and region

Multi-item ACID transactions with snapshot isolation within a partition

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

by using IndexedDB, SQL.JS or proprietary FileStorage

yes

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

Memcached and Redis integration

User concepts

Access control

authentication via encrypted signatures

Access rights for users and roles can be defined via the AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM)

Access rights can be defined down to the item level

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