DBMS > Amazon DynamoDB vs. BigchainDB vs. Cassandra vs. HarperDB vs. mSQL

System Properties Comparison Amazon DynamoDB vs. BigchainDB vs. Cassandra vs. HarperDB vs. mSQL

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

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

BigchainDB is scalable blockchain database offering decentralization, immutability and native assets

Wide-column store based on ideas of BigTable and DynamoDB

Optimized for write access

Ultra-low latency distributed database with an intuitive REST API supporting NoSQL and SQL (including joins). Deployment of functions and databases simultaneously with a consolidated node-level architecture.

mSQL (Mini SQL) is a simple and lightweight RDBMS

Primary database model

Document store
Key-value store

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

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	0.79
Rank	#212	Overall
	#36	Document stores

Score	101.89
Rank	#12	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	0.55
Rank	#248	Overall
	#38	Document stores

Score	1.27
Rank	#167	Overall
	#77	Relational DBMS

Website

aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

www.bigchaindb.com

cassandra.apache.org

www.harperdb.io

hughestech.com.au/products/msql

Technical documentation

docs.aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

bigchaindb.readthedocs.io/en/latest

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

docs.harperdb.io/docs

Developer

Amazon

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

HarperDB

Hughes Technologies

Initial release

2012

2016

2008

2017

1994

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

3.1, August 2021

4.4, October 2021

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free tier for a limited amount of database operations

Open Source

AGPL v3

Open Source

Apache version 2

commercial

free community edition available

commercial

free licenses can be provided

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.

Astra DB: Multi-cloud DBaaS built on Apache Cassandra.

Implementation language

Python

Java

Node.js

Server operating systems

hosted

Linux

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
OS X

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
Solaris SPARC/x86
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

dynamic schema

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

JSON data types

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

restricted

only equality queries, not always the best performing solution

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like SELECT, DML and DDL statements (CQL)

SQL-like data manipulation statements

A subset of ANSI SQL is implemented

no subqueries, aggregate functions, views, foreign keys, triggers

APIs and other access methods

RESTful HTTP API

CLI Client
RESTful HTTP API

Proprietary protocol

CQL (Cassandra Query Language, an SQL-like language)
Thrift

JDBC
ODBC
React Hooks
RESTful HTTP/JSON API
WebSocket

JDBC
ODBC

Supported programming languages

.Net
ColdFusion
Erlang
Groovy
Java
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Python
Ruby

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

.Net
C
C#
C++
ColdFusion
D
Dart
Delphi
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Lisp
MatLab
Objective C
Perl
PHP
PowerShell
Prolog
Python
R
Ruby
Rust
Scala
Swift

C
C++
Delphi
Java
Perl
PHP
Tcl

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

Custom Functions

since release 3.1

Triggers

yes

by integration with AWS Lambda

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

A table resides as a whole on one (or more) nodes in a cluster

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

yes

the nodes on which a table resides can be defined

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 individually decided for each write operation

Immediate Consistency

none

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

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

Atomicity and isolation are supported for single operations

Atomic execution of specific operations

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

yes,with MongoDB ord RethinkDB

yes

yes, using LMDB

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

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

yes

Access rights for users can be defined per object

Access rights for users and roles

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

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Competitive advantages

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Typical application scenarios

Internet of Things (IOT), fraud detection applications, recommendation engines, product...
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Key customers

Apple, Netflix, Uber, ING,, Intuit,Fidelity, NY Times, Outbrain, BazaarVoice, Best...
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Market metrics

Cassandra is used by 40% of the Fortune 100.
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Licensing and pricing models

Apache licenseÂ Pricing for commercial distributions provided by DataStax and available...
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