DBMS > Amazon DynamoDB vs. Amazon SimpleDB vs. PlanetScale vs. PouchDB vs. Realm

System Properties Comparison Amazon DynamoDB vs. Amazon SimpleDB vs. PlanetScale vs. PouchDB vs. Realm

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

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

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

Scalable, distributed, serverless MySQL database platform built on top of Vitess

JavaScript DBMS with an API inspired by CouchDB

A DBMS built for use on mobile devices that’s a fast, easy to use alternative to SQLite and Core Data

Primary database model

Document store
Key-value store

Key-value store

Relational DBMS

Document store

Secondary database models

Document store
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	74.07
Rank	#17	Overall
	#3	Document stores
	#2	Key-value stores

Score	1.85
Rank	#138	Overall
	#24	Key-value stores

Score	1.59
Rank	#151	Overall
	#70	Relational DBMS

Score	2.28
Rank	#115	Overall
	#21	Document stores

Score	7.60
Rank	#52	Overall
	#9	Document stores

Website

aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

aws.amazon.com/simpledb

planetscale.com

pouchdb.com

realm.io

Technical documentation

docs.aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

docs.aws.amazon.com/simpledb

planetscale.com/docs

pouchdb.com/guides

realm.io/docs

Developer

Amazon

PlanetScale

Apache Software Foundation

Realm, acquired by MongoDB in May 2019

Initial release

2012

2007

2020

2012

2014

Current release

7.1.1, June 2019

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free tier for a limited amount of database operations

commercial

Open Source

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

hosted

Docker
Linux
macOS

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

Android
Backend: server-less
iOS
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

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.

Secondary indexes

yes

All columns are indexed automatically

yes

via views

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

with proprietary extensions

APIs and other access methods

RESTful HTTP API

ADO.NET
JDBC
MySQL protocol
ODBC

HTTP REST

only for PouchDB Server
JavaScript API

Supported programming languages

.Net
ColdFusion
Erlang
Groovy
Java
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

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

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

JavaScript

.Net
Java

with Android only
Objective-C
React Native
Swift

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

proprietary syntax

View functions in JavaScript

runs within the applications so server-side scripts are unnecessary

Triggers

yes

by integration with AWS Lambda

yes

Change Listeners

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

none

Sharding must be implemented in the application

Sharding

with a proxy-based framework, named couchdb-lounge

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

Multi-source replication

also with CouchDB databases
Source-replica replication

also with CouchDB databases

none

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

may be implemented via Amazon Elastic MapReduce (Amazon EMR)

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

can be specified for read operations

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

can be specified for read operations

Eventual Consistency across shards
Immediate Consistency within a shard

Eventual Consistency

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

not for MyISAM storage engine

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

ACID across one or more tables within a single AWS account and region

Concurrent data updates can be detected by the application

ACID at shard level

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

table locks or row locks depending on storage engine

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

by using IndexedDB, WebSQL or LevelDB as backend

yes

In-memory capabilities

Is there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.

yes

In-Memory realm

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users and roles can be defined via the AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM)

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

no user groups or roles

yes

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