DBMS > AlaSQL vs. Amazon DynamoDB vs. Cassandra vs. SQL.JS vs. Vertica

System Properties Comparison AlaSQL vs. Amazon DynamoDB vs. Cassandra vs. SQL.JS vs. Vertica

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

JavaScript DBMS library

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

Wide-column store based on ideas of BigTable and DynamoDB

Optimized for write access

Port of SQLite to JavaScript

Cloud or off-cloud analytical database and query engine for structured and semi-structured streaming and batch data. Machine learning platform with built-in algorithms, data preparation capabilities, and model evaluation and management via SQL or Python.

Primary database model

Document store
Relational DBMS

Document store
Key-value store

Wide column store

Relational DBMS

Column oriented

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

Spatial DBMS
Time Series DBMS

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

Score	0.46
Rank	#260	Overall
	#40	Document stores
	#121	Relational DBMS

Score	74.07
Rank	#17	Overall
	#3	Document stores
	#2	Key-value stores

Score	101.89
Rank	#12	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	0.53
Rank	#252	Overall
	#116	Relational DBMS

Score	10.68
Rank	#43	Overall
	#27	Relational DBMS

Website

alasql.org

aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

cassandra.apache.org

sql.js.org

www.vertica.com

Technical documentation

github.com/AlaSQL/alasql

docs.aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

sql.js.org/documentation/index.html

vertica.com/documentation

Developer

Andrey Gershun & Mathias R. Wulff

Amazon

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Alon Zakai

enhancements implemented by others

OpenText

previously Micro Focus and Hewlett Packard

Initial release

2014

2012

2008

2012

2005

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

12.0.3, January 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

MIT-License

commercial

free tier for a limited amount of database operations

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

commercial

Limited community edition free

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

on-premises, all major clouds - Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform and containers

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

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

Astra DB: Multi-cloud DBaaS built on Apache Cassandra.

Implementation language

JavaScript

Java

JavaScript

C++

Server operating systems

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

hosted

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

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

Linux

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

Yes, but also semi-structure/unstructured data storage, and complex hierarchical data (like Parquet) stored and/or queried.

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.

Secondary indexes

yes

restricted

only equality queries, not always the best performing solution

No Indexes Required. Different internal optimization strategy, but same functionality included.

SQL

Support of SQL

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

SQL-like SELECT, DML and DDL statements (CQL)

yes

SQL-92 is not fully supported

Full 1999 standard plus machine learning, time series and geospatial. Over 650 functions.

APIs and other access methods

JavaScript API

RESTful HTTP API

Proprietary protocol

CQL (Cassandra Query Language, an SQL-like language)
Thrift

JavaScript API

ADO.NET
JDBC
Kafka Connector
ODBC
RESTful HTTP API
Spark Connector
vSQL

character-based, interactive, front-end utility

Supported programming languages

JavaScript

.Net
ColdFusion
Erlang
Groovy
Java
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

JavaScript

C#
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
R

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes, PostgreSQL PL/pgSQL, with minor differences

Triggers

yes

by integration with AWS Lambda

yes

yes, called Custom Alerts

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

none

horizontal partitioning, hierarchical partitioning

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

none

yes

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

none

Multi-source replication

One, or more copies of data replicated across nodes, or object-store used for repository.

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

may be implemented via Amazon Elastic MapReduce (Amazon EMR)

yes

Bi-directional Spark integration

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

none

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

can be specified for read operations

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

can be individually decided for each write operation

none

Immediate 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

Atomicity and isolation are supported for single operations

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

by using IndexedDB, SQL.JS or proprietary FileStorage

yes

except by serializing a db to a file

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 can be defined via the AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM)

Access rights for users can be defined per object

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard; supports Kerberos, LDAP, Ident and hash

More information provided by the system vendor

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Competitive advantages

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Key customers

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Licensing and pricing models

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