DBMS > Amazon Aurora vs. PostgreSQL vs. Snowflake

System Properties Comparison Amazon Aurora vs. PostgreSQL vs. Snowflake

Please select another system to include it in the comparison.

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Fully managed relational database service built for the cloud providing unparalleled high performance and availability at global scale for MySQL, PostgreSQL, and DSQL

Widely used open source RDBMS

Developed as objectoriented DBMS (Postgres), gradually enhanced with 'standards' like SQL

Cloud-based data warehousing service for structured and semi-structured data

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

with object oriented extensions, e.g.: user defined types/functions and inheritance. Handling of key/value pairs with hstore module.

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
Spatial DBMS
Vector DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS

with Apache Age
Spatial DBMS
Vector DBMS

with pgvector extension

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

Score	7.33
Rank	#46	Overall
	#29	Relational DBMS

Score	667.25
Rank	#4	Overall
	#4	Relational DBMS

Score	168.09
Rank	#6	Overall
	#5	Relational DBMS

Website

aws.amazon.com/rds/aurora

www.postgresql.org

www.snowflake.com

Technical documentation

docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/AuroraUserGuide/CHAP_AuroraOverview.html
docs.aws.amazon.com/aurora-dsql/latest/userguide/what-is-aurora-dsql.html

www.postgresql.org/docs

docs.snowflake.net/manuals/index.html

Social network pages

Developer

Amazon

PostgreSQL Global Development Group

www.postgresql.org/developer

Snowflake Computing Inc.

Initial release

2015

1989

1989: Postgres, 1996: PostgreSQL

2014

Current release

Aurora DSQL, November 2024 (preview), PostgreSQL: docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/AuroraPostgreSQLReleaseNotes/AuroraPostgreSQL.Updates.html , MySQL: docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/AuroraMySQLReleaseNotes/AuroraMySQL.release-calendars.html

16.4, August 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

BSD

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.

PostgreSQL Flex @ STACKIT offers managed PostgreSQL Instances with adjustable CPU, RAM, storage amount and speed and several extensions available, in enterprise grade to perfectly match all application requirements. All 100% GDPR-compliant.

Implementation language

PostgreSQL/MySQL: C, C++, Aurora DSQL: Rust

Server operating systems

Amazon Linux

FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
NetBSD
OpenBSD
OS X
Solaris
Unix
Windows

hosted

Data scheme

yes

support of semi-structured data formats (JSON, XML, Avro)

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

specific XML-type available, but no XML query functionality.

yes

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes, MySQL and PostgreSQL dialects

yes

standard with numerous extensions

yes

APIs and other access methods

DSQL API: docs.aws.amazon.com/aurora-dsql/latest/userguide/CHAP_api_reference.html
MySQL wire protocol
PostgreSQL wire protocol
RDS Data API: docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/UserGuide/ProgrammingGuide.html

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

CLI Client
JDBC
ODBC

Supported programming languages

Ada
C
C#
C++
D
Delphi
Eiffel
Erlang
Haskell
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Rust
Scheme
Tcl

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java

JDBC
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
Tcl

JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

PL/pgSQL, MySQL stored program language, APG trusted language extensions

user defined functions

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

user defined functions

Triggers

Aurora MySQL: Yes. Aurora PostgreSQL: Yes. Aurora DSQL: No.

yes

similar concept for controling cloud resources

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

DBMS table partitioning, Horizontal storage partitioning, Sharding, Distributed horizontal partitioning (DSQL)

partitioning by range, list and (since PostgreSQL 11) by hash

yes

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Full replication
Logical replication
Snapshot replication
Transactional replication

Source-replica replication

other methods possible by using 3rd party extensions

yes

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency
Immediate/Strong Consistency

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID, Multi-statement

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

Multiversion concurrency control (MVCC) with fully compatible MySQL and PostgreSQL options. Optimistic concurrency control (OCC) in Aurora DSQL.

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

Data is replicated across 3 Availability Zones (AZs) within a single AWS Region. Active-active multi-Region high availability across 3 Regions (2 active, 1 witness) and automated failover recovery with Aurora DSQL. Automated, continuous backup of data with point in time restore. Fault-tolerant, self-healing storage system.

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

Role based permissions
Row level security

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Users with fine-grained authorization concept, user roles and pluggable authentication

More information provided by the system vendor

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.