DBMS > AlaSQL vs. Amazon DynamoDB vs. Citus vs. TimescaleDB

System Properties Comparison AlaSQL vs. Amazon DynamoDB vs. Citus vs. TimescaleDB

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

JavaScript DBMS library

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

Scalable hybrid operational and analytics RDBMS for big data use cases based on PostgreSQL

A time series DBMS optimized for fast ingest and complex queries, based on PostgreSQL

Primary database model

Document store
Relational DBMS

Document store
Key-value store

Relational DBMS

Time Series DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store

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

Score	2.15
Rank	#117	Overall
	#56	Relational DBMS

Score	4.46
Rank	#71	Overall
	#5	Time Series DBMS

Website

alasql.org

aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

www.citusdata.com

www.timescale.com

Technical documentation

github.com/AlaSQL/alasql

docs.aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

docs.citusdata.com

docs.timescale.com

Developer

Andrey Gershun & Mathias R. Wulff

Amazon

Timescale

Initial release

2014

2012

2010

2017

Current release

8.1, December 2018

2.15.0, May 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

MIT-License

commercial

free tier for a limited amount of database operations

Open Source

AGPL, commercial license also available

Open Source

Apache 2.0

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

Server operating systems

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

hosted

Linux

Linux
OS X
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

numerics, strings, booleans, arrays, JSON blobs, geospatial dimensions, currencies, binary data, other complex data 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.

yes

specific XML type available, but no XML query functionality

yes

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

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

yes

standard, with numerous extensions

yes

full PostgreSQL SQL syntax

APIs and other access methods

JavaScript API

RESTful HTTP API

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

Supported programming languages

JavaScript

.Net
ColdFusion
Erlang
Groovy
Java
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
Tcl

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java

JDBC
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

user defined functions

realized in proprietary language PL/pgSQL or with common languages like Perl, Python, Tcl etc.

user defined functions, PL/pgSQL, PL/Tcl, PL/Perl, PL/Python, PL/Java, PL/PHP, PL/R, PL/Ruby, PL/Scheme, PL/Unix shell

Triggers

yes

by integration with AWS Lambda

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Sharding

yes, across time and space (hash partitioning) attributes

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

none

yes

Source-replica replication

other methods possible by using 3rd party extensions

Source-replica replication with hot standby and reads on replicas

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

may be implemented via Amazon Elastic MapReduce (Amazon EMR)

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

none

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

can be specified for read operations

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

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

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)

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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