DBMS > AlaSQL vs. Amazon SimpleDB vs. Cassandra vs. EJDB vs. IBM Db2

System Properties Comparison AlaSQL vs. Amazon SimpleDB vs. Cassandra vs. EJDB vs. IBM Db2

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

JavaScript DBMS library

Hosted simple database service by Amazon, with the data stored in the Amazon Cloud.

There is an unrelated product called SimpleDB developed by Edward Sciore

Wide-column store based on ideas of BigTable and DynamoDB

Optimized for write access

Embeddable document-store database library with JSON representation of queries (in MongoDB style)

Common in IBM host environments, 2 different versions for host and Windows/Linux

Primary database model

Document store
Relational DBMS

Since Version 10.5 support for JSON/BSON documents compatible with MongoDB

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

Document store
RDF store

in Db2 LUW (Linux, Unix, Windows)
Spatial DBMS

with Db2 Spatial Extender

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	1.85
Rank	#138	Overall
	#24	Key-value stores

Score	101.89
Rank	#12	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	0.27
Rank	#297	Overall
	#44	Document stores

Score	128.46
Rank	#8	Overall
	#5	Relational DBMS

Website

alasql.org

aws.amazon.com/simpledb

cassandra.apache.org

github.com/Softmotions/ejdb

www.ibm.com/products/db2

Technical documentation

github.com/AlaSQL/alasql

docs.aws.amazon.com/simpledb

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

github.com/Softmotions/ejdb/blob/master/README.md

www.ibm.com/docs/en/db2

Developer

Andrey Gershun & Mathias R. Wulff

Amazon

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Softmotions

IBM

Initial release

2014

2007

2008

2012

1983

host version

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

12.1, October 2016

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

MIT-License

commercial

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

GPLv2

commercial

free version is available

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.

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

Implementation language

JavaScript

Java

C and C++

Server operating systems

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

hosted

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

server-less

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
Solaris
Windows
z/OS

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

string, integer, double, bool, date, object_id

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

All columns are indexed automatically

restricted

only equality queries, not always the best performing solution

yes

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

APIs and other access methods

JavaScript API

RESTful HTTP API

Proprietary protocol

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

in-process shared library

ADO.NET
JDBC
JSON style queries

MongoDB compatible
ODBC
XQuery

Supported programming languages

JavaScript

.Net
C
C++
Erlang
Java
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

Actionscript
C
C#
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Lua
Objective-C
Pike
Python
Ruby

C
C#
C++
Cobol
Delphi
Fortran
Java
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Visual Basic

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Sharding must be implemented in the application

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

none

Sharding

only with Windows/Unix/Linux Version

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

none

yes

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

none

yes

with separate tools (MQ, InfoSphere)

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

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

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

typically not needed, however similar functionality with collection joins possible

yes

Transaction concepts

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

yes

only for local storage and DOM-storage

Concurrent data updates can be detected by the application

Atomicity and isolation are supported for single operations

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Read/Write 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 object

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

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Competitive advantages

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Typical application scenarios

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Key customers

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Market metrics

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Licensing and pricing models

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