DBMS > AlaSQL vs. Amazon SimpleDB vs. Cassandra vs. H2 vs. Microsoft Azure SQL Database

System Properties Comparison AlaSQL vs. Amazon SimpleDB vs. Cassandra vs. H2 vs. Microsoft Azure SQL Database

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

Full-featured RDBMS with a small footprint, either embedded into a Java application or used as a database server.

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

Primary database model

Document store
Relational DBMS

Key-value store

Wide column store

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

Spatial DBMS

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	1.85
Rank	#138	Overall
	#24	Key-value stores

Score	101.89
Rank	#12	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	8.13
Rank	#49	Overall
	#31	Relational DBMS

Score	77.99
Rank	#16	Overall
	#11	Relational DBMS

Website

alasql.org

aws.amazon.com/simpledb

cassandra.apache.org

www.h2database.com

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

Technical documentation

github.com/AlaSQL/alasql

docs.aws.amazon.com/simpledb

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

www.h2database.com/html/main.html

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

Developer

Andrey Gershun & Mathias R. Wulff

Amazon

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Thomas Mueller

Microsoft

Initial release

2014

2007

2008

2005

2010

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

2.2.220, July 2023

V12

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

MIT-License

commercial

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

dual-licence (Mozilla public license, Eclipse public 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.

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

Implementation language

JavaScript

Java

C++

Server operating systems

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

hosted

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

All OS with a Java VM

hosted

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

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

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

JDBC
ODBC

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC

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

Java

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

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

Java Stored Procedures and User-Defined Functions

Transact SQL

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

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

none

yes

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

With clustering: 2 database servers on different computers operate on identical copies of a database

yes, with always 3 replicas available

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

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

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

yes, multi-version concurrency control (MVCC)

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

Apache Cassandra is the leading NoSQL, distributed database management system, well...
» more

Competitive advantages

No single point of failure ensures 100% availability . Operational simplicity for...
» more

Typical application scenarios

Internet of Things (IOT), fraud detection applications, recommendation engines, product...
» more

Key customers

Apple, Netflix, Uber, ING,, Intuit,Fidelity, NY Times, Outbrain, BazaarVoice, Best...
» more

Market metrics

Cassandra is used by 40% of the Fortune 100.
» more

Licensing and pricing models

Apache licenseÂ Pricing for commercial distributions provided by DataStax and available...
» more

We invite representatives of system vendors to contact us for updating and extending the system information,
and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.