DBMS > Amazon DynamoDB vs. Apache Impala vs. Datomic vs. Oracle Berkeley DB vs. Stardog

System Properties Comparison Amazon DynamoDB vs. Apache Impala vs. Datomic vs. Oracle Berkeley DB vs. Stardog

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

Widely used in-process key-value store

Enterprise Knowledge Graph platform and graph DBMS with high availability, high performance reasoning, and virtualization

Primary database model

Document store
Key-value store

Relational DBMS

Key-value store

supports sorted and unsorted key sets
Native XML DBMS

in the Oracle Berkeley DB XML version

Graph DBMS
RDF store

Secondary database models

Document store

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	2.21
Rank	#117	Overall
	#20	Key-value stores
	#3	Native XML DBMS

Score	2.02
Rank	#123	Overall
	#11	Graph DBMS
	#6	RDF stores

Website

aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

impala.apache.org

www.datomic.com

www.oracle.com/database/technologies/related/berkeleydb.html

www.stardog.com

Technical documentation

docs.aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

impala.apache.org/impala-docs.html

docs.datomic.com

docs.oracle.com/cd/E17076_05/html/index.html

docs.stardog.com

Developer

Amazon

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top-level project, originally developed by Cloudera

Cognitect

Oracle

originally developed by Sleepycat, which was acquired by Oracle

Stardog-Union

Initial release

2012

2013

2012

1994

2010

Current release

4.1.0, June 2022

1.0.6735, June 2023

18.1.40, May 2020

7.3.0, May 2020

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free tier for a limited amount of database operations

Open Source

Apache Version 2

commercial

limited edition free

Open Source

commercial license available

commercial

60-day fully-featured trial license; 1-year fully-featured non-commercial use license for academics/students

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

C++

Java, Clojure

C, Java, C++ (depending on the Berkeley DB edition)

Java

Server operating systems

hosted

Linux

All OS with a Java VM

AIX
Android
FreeBSD
iOS
Linux
OS X
Solaris
VxWorks
Windows

Linux
macOS
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free

schema-free and OWL/RDFS-schema support

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

only with the Berkeley DB XML edition

Import/export of XML data possible

Secondary indexes

yes

supports real-time indexing in full-text and geospatial

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like DML and DDL statements

yes

SQL interfaced based on SQLite is available

Yes, compatible with all major SQL variants through dedicated BI/SQL Server

APIs and other access methods

RESTful HTTP API

JDBC
ODBC

RESTful HTTP API

GraphQL query language
HTTP API
Jena RDF API
OWL
RDF4J API
Sesame REST HTTP Protocol
SNARL
SPARQL
Spring Data
Stardog Studio
TinkerPop 3

Supported programming languages

.Net
ColdFusion
Erlang
Groovy
Java
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

All languages supporting JDBC/ODBC

Clojure
Java

.Net

Figaro is a .Net framework assembly that extends Berkeley DB XML into an embeddable database engine for .NET
others

Third-party libraries to manipulate Berkeley DB files are available for many languages
C
C#
C++
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)

3rd party binding
Perl
Python
Tcl

.Net
Clojure
Groovy
Java
JavaScript
Python
Ruby

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

user defined functions and integration of map-reduce

yes

Transaction Functions

user defined functions and aggregates, HTTP Server extensions in Java

Triggers

yes

by integration with AWS Lambda

By using transaction functions

yes

only for the SQL API

yes

via event handlers

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

none

But extensive use of caching in the application peers

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

selectable replication factor

none

But extensive use of caching in the application peers

Source-replica replication

Multi-source replication in HA-Cluster

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

Immediate Consistency in HA-Cluster

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

relationships in graphs

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

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

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, groups and roles

based on Apache Sentry and Kerberos

Access rights for users and roles

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.