DBMS > AlaSQL vs. Amazon DynamoDB vs. CouchDB vs. Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs. Teradata Aster

System Properties Comparison AlaSQL vs. Amazon DynamoDB vs. CouchDB vs. Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs. Teradata Aster

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Teradata Aster has been integrated into other Teradata systems and therefore will be removed from the DB-Engines ranking.

Description

JavaScript DBMS library

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

A native JSON - document store inspired by Lotus Notes, scalable from globally distributed server-clusters down to mobile phones.

Database as a Service offering with high compatibility to Microsoft SQL Server

Platform for big data analytics on multistructured data sources and types

Primary database model

Document store
Relational DBMS

Document store
Key-value store

Document store

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Spatial DBMS

using the Geocouch extension

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial 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	9.30
Rank	#45	Overall
	#7	Document stores

Score	77.99
Rank	#16	Overall
	#11	Relational DBMS

Website

alasql.org

aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

couchdb.apache.org

azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/azure-sql/database

Technical documentation

github.com/AlaSQL/alasql

docs.aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

docs.couchdb.org/en/stable

docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-sql

Developer

Andrey Gershun & Mathias R. Wulff

Amazon

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top-level project, originally developed by Damien Katz, a former Lotus Notes developer

Microsoft

Teradata

Initial release

2014

2012

2005

2010

2005

Current release

3.3.3, December 2023

V12

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

MIT-License

commercial

free tier for a limited amount of database operations

Open Source

Apache version 2

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

Erlang

C++

Server operating systems

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

hosted

Android
BSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

hosted

Linux

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

Flexible Schema (defined schema, partial schema, schema free)

defined schema within the relational store; partial schema or schema free in the Aster File Store

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

in Aster File Store

Secondary indexes

yes

via views

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

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

yes

APIs and other access methods

JavaScript API

RESTful HTTP API

RESTful HTTP/JSON API

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
OLE DB

Supported programming languages

JavaScript

.Net
ColdFusion
Erlang
Groovy
Java
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

C
C#
ColdFusion
Erlang
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Lisp
Lua
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
PL/SQL
Python
Ruby
Smalltalk

.Net
C#
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby

C
C#
C++
Java
Python
R

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

View functions in JavaScript

Transact SQL

R packages

Triggers

yes

by integration with AWS Lambda

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Sharding

improved architecture with release 2.0

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

none

yes

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

yes, with always 3 replicas available

yes

Dimension tables are replicated across all nodes in the cluster. The number of replicas for the file store can be configured.

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

may be implemented via Amazon Elastic MapReduce (Amazon EMR)

yes

SQL Map-Reduce Framework

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

Immediate Consistency or Eventual Consistency depending on configuration

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

atomic operations within a single document possible

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

strategy: optimistic locking

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)

Access rights for users can be defined per database

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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