DBMS > Amazon DynamoDB vs. Apache Impala vs. CouchDB vs. FileMaker vs. Memcached

System Properties Comparison Amazon DynamoDB vs. Apache Impala vs. CouchDB vs. FileMaker vs. Memcached

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

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

Analytic DBMS for Hadoop

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

FileMaker is a cross-platform RDBMS that includes a GUI frontend.

In-memory key-value store, originally intended for caching

Primary database model

Document store
Key-value store

Secondary database models

Document store

Spatial DBMS

using the Geocouch extension

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	13.77
Rank	#40	Overall
	#24	Relational DBMS

Score	9.30
Rank	#45	Overall
	#7	Document stores

Score	48.20
Rank	#20	Overall
	#14	Relational DBMS

Score	19.42
Rank	#32	Overall
	#4	Key-value stores

Website

aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

impala.apache.org

couchdb.apache.org

www.claris.com/filemaker

www.memcached.org

Technical documentation

docs.aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

impala.apache.org/impala-docs.html

docs.couchdb.org/en/stable

www.claris.com/resources/documentation

github.com/memcached/memcached/wiki

Developer

Amazon

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top-level project, originally developed by Cloudera

Apache Software Foundation

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

Claris

a subsidiary of Apple

Danga Interactive

originally developed by Brad Fitzpatrick for LiveJournal

Initial release

2012

2013

2005

1983

2003

Current release

4.1.0, June 2022

3.3.3, December 2023

19.4.1, November 2021

1.6.25, March 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free tier for a limited amount of database operations

Open Source

Apache Version 2

Open Source

Apache version 2

commercial

Open Source

BSD license

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

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Implementation language

C++

Erlang

Server operating systems

hosted

Linux

Android
BSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

iOS

client part only
Linux
OS X
Windows

FreeBSD
Linux
OS X
Unix
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free

yes

schema-free

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

A http query request can return the data in XML format

Secondary indexes

yes

via views

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like DML and DDL statements

yes

via plugins

APIs and other access methods

RESTful HTTP API

JDBC
ODBC

RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Filemaker WebDirect
JDBC
ODBC

Proprietary protocol

Supported programming languages

.Net
ColdFusion
Erlang
Groovy
Java
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

All languages supporting JDBC/ODBC

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

PHP

.Net
C
C++
ColdFusion
Erlang
Java
Lisp
Lua
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

user defined functions and integration of map-reduce

View functions in JavaScript

yes

Triggers

yes

by integration with AWS Lambda

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

improved architecture with release 2.0

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

selectable replication factor

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

Source-replica replication, warm standby

since Version 14

none

Repcached, a Memcached patch, provides this functionallity

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

may be implemented via Amazon Elastic MapReduce (Amazon EMR)

yes

query execution via MapReduce

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

can be specified for read operations

Eventual Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

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

atomic operations within a single document possible

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

strategy: optimistic locking

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

In-memory capabilities

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

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, groups and roles

based on Apache Sentry and Kerberos

Access rights for users can be defined per database

simple rights management via user accounts and connection to external directory services

yes

using SASL (Simple Authentication and Security Layer) protocol

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