DBMS > Amazon DynamoDB vs. Apache Impala vs. Datomic vs. Microsoft Azure AI Search vs. Postgres-XL

System Properties Comparison Amazon DynamoDB vs. Apache Impala vs. Datomic vs. Microsoft Azure AI Search vs. Postgres-XL

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

Datomic builds on immutable values, supports point-in-time queries and uses 3rd party systems for durability

Search-as-a-service for web and mobile app development

Based on PostgreSQL enhanced with MPP and write-scale-out cluster features

Primary database model

Document store
Key-value store

Relational DBMS

Search engine

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store

Vector DBMS

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	13.77
Rank	#40	Overall
	#24	Relational DBMS

Score	1.59
Rank	#150	Overall
	#69	Relational DBMS

Score	5.59
Rank	#63	Overall
	#7	Search engines

Score	0.49
Rank	#256	Overall
	#117	Relational DBMS

Website

aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

impala.apache.org

www.datomic.com

azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/search

www.postgres-xl.org

Technical documentation

docs.aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

impala.apache.org/impala-docs.html

docs.datomic.com

learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/search

www.postgres-xl.org/documentation

Developer

Amazon

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top-level project, originally developed by Cloudera

Cognitect

Microsoft

Initial release

2012

2013

2012

2015

2014

since 2012, originally named StormDB

Current release

4.1.0, June 2022

1.0.6735, June 2023

10 R1, October 2018

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free tier for a limited amount of database operations

Open Source

Apache Version 2

commercial

limited edition free

commercial

Open Source

Mozilla public 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++

Java, Clojure

Server operating systems

hosted

Linux

All OS with a Java VM

hosted

Linux
macOS

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

XML type, but no XML query functionality

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like DML and DDL statements

yes

distributed, parallel query execution

APIs and other access methods

RESTful HTTP API

JDBC
ODBC

RESTful HTTP API

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

Supported programming languages

.Net
ColdFusion
Erlang
Groovy
Java
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

All languages supporting JDBC/ODBC

Clojure
Java

C#
Java
JavaScript
Python

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Erlang
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
Tcl

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

user defined functions and integration of map-reduce

yes

Transaction Functions

user defined functions

Triggers

yes

by integration with AWS Lambda

By using transaction functions

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

none

But extensive use of caching in the application peers

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

horizontal partitioning

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

selectable replication factor

none

But extensive use of caching in the application peers

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

may be implemented via Amazon Elastic MapReduce (Amazon EMR)

yes

query execution via MapReduce

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

can be specified for read operations

Eventual Consistency

Immediate 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

ACID

MVCC

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

using external storage systems (e.g. Cassandra, DynamoDB, PostgreSQL, Couchbase and others)

yes

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

recommended only for testing and development

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

yes

using Azure authentication

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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