DBMS > Amazon DynamoDB vs. BigchainDB vs. Cassandra vs. Postgres-XL vs. Rockset

System Properties Comparison Amazon DynamoDB vs. BigchainDB vs. Cassandra vs. Postgres-XL vs. Rockset

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

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

A scalable, reliable search and analytics service in the cloud, built on RocksDB

Primary database model

Document store
Key-value store

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

Document store
Spatial DBMS

Relational DBMS
Search engine

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

Score	74.45
Rank	#17	Overall
	#3	Document stores
	#2	Key-value stores

Score	0.85
Rank	#208	Overall
	#35	Document stores

Score	98.83
Rank	#12	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	0.53
Rank	#254	Overall
	#117	Relational DBMS

Score	0.82
Rank	#212	Overall
	#36	Document stores

Website

aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

Technical documentation

docs.aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

bigchaindb.readthedocs.io/en/latest

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

www.postgres-xl.org/documentation

docs.rockset.com

Developer

Amazon

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Rockset

Initial release

2012

2016

2008

2014

since 2012, originally named StormDB

2019

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

10 R1, October 2018

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free tier for a limited amount of database operations

Open Source

AGPL v3

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

Mozilla public license

commercial

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

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Implementation language

Python

Java

C++

Server operating systems

hosted

Linux

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
macOS

hosted

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

dynamic typing

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

ingestion from XML files supported

Secondary indexes

yes

restricted

only equality queries, not always the best performing solution

yes

all fields are automatically indexed

SQL

Support of SQL

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

yes

distributed, parallel query execution

Read-only SQL queries, including JOINs

APIs and other access methods

RESTful HTTP API

CLI Client
RESTful HTTP API

Proprietary protocol

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

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

HTTP REST

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

Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

user defined functions

Triggers

yes

by integration with AWS Lambda

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

horizontal partitioning

Automatic sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

yes

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

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

Atomicity and isolation are supported for single operations

ACID

MVCC

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

yes,with MongoDB ord RethinkDB

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)

yes

Access rights for users can be defined per object

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Access rights for users and organizations can be defined via Rockset console

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Apache Cassandra is the leading NoSQL, distributed database management system, well...
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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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