DBMS > Amazon DynamoDB vs. Cassandra vs. CouchDB

System Properties Comparison Amazon DynamoDB vs. Cassandra vs. CouchDB

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

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

Wide-column store based on ideas of BigTable and DynamoDB

Optimized for write access

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

Primary database model

Document store
Key-value store

Wide column store

Document store

Secondary database models

Spatial DBMS

using the Geocouch extension

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

Score	87.26
Rank	#15	Overall
	#2	Document stores
	#2	Key-value stores

Score	118.15
Rank	#11	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	17.02
Rank	#41	Overall
	#7	Document stores

Website

aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

cassandra.apache.org

couchdb.apache.org

Technical documentation

docs.aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

docs.couchdb.org/en/stable

Developer

Amazon

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Apache Software Foundation

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

Initial release

2012

2008

2005

Current release

4.0.5, July 2022

3.2.2, April 2022

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

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.

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Aiven for Apache Cassandra: Fully managed, open source NoSQL database specifically designed to be highly available, performant, and scalable.

Implementation language

Java

Erlang

Server operating systems

hosted

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

Android
BSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Data scheme

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.

Secondary indexes

yes

restricted

only equality queries, not always the best performing solution

yes

via views

SQL

Support of SQL

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

APIs and other access methods

RESTful HTTP API

Proprietary protocol

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

RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Supported programming languages

.Net
ColdFusion
Erlang
Groovy
Java
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

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

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

View functions in JavaScript

Triggers

yes

by integration with AWS Lambda

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

Sharding

improved architecture with release 2.0

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

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

Eventual Consistency

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 operations within a single document possible

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

strategy: optimistic locking

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 can be defined per object

Access rights for users can be defined per database

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

No single point of failure ensures 100% availability . Operational simplicity for...
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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...
» more

Market metrics

Cassandra is used by 40% of the Fortune 100.
» more

Licensing and pricing models

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

PacketFabric's Anna Claiborne and Dave Ward: Building Strong Networks with Guts and Vision
10 August 2022

Real-World Machine Learning with Apache Cassandra and Apache Spark (Part 2)
2 August 2022

Creating A Safer Internet One Hacker at a Time with Marten Mickos of HackerOne
27 July 2022

Migrating from SQL to NoSQL with Spring PetClinic and Apache Cassandra
26 July 2022

Pulling Real-Time Ethereum Transactions with Web3.js
20 July 2022

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and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.