DBMS > Amazon DynamoDB vs. Cassandra vs. EDB Postgres vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. Realm

System Properties Comparison Amazon DynamoDB vs. Cassandra vs. EDB Postgres vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. Realm

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

The EDB Postgres Platform is an enterprise-class data management platform based on the open source database PostgreSQL with flexible deployment options and Oracle compatibility features, complemented by tool kits for management, integration, and migration.

Cloud-hosted realtime document store. iOS, Android, and JavaScript clients share one Realtime Database instance and automatically receive updates with the newest data.

A DBMS built for use on mobile devices that’s a fast, easy to use alternative to SQLite and Core Data

Primary database model

Document store
Key-value store

Wide column store

Relational DBMS

Document store

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

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	101.89
Rank	#12	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	1.90
Rank	#135	Overall
	#63	Relational DBMS

Score	14.29
Rank	#39	Overall
	#6	Document stores

Score	7.60
Rank	#52	Overall
	#9	Document stores

Website

aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

cassandra.apache.org

www.enterprisedb.com

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

realm.io

Technical documentation

docs.aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

www.enterprisedb.com/docs

firebase.google.com/docs/database

realm.io/docs

Developer

Amazon

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

EnterpriseDB

Google

acquired by Google 2014

Realm, acquired by MongoDB in May 2019

Initial release

2012

2008

2005

2012

2014

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

14, December 2021

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free tier for a limited amount of database operations

Open Source

Apache version 2

commercial

BSD for PostgreSQL-components

commercial

Open Source

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

Java

Server operating systems

hosted

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
Windows

hosted

Android
Backend: server-less
iOS
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

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

specific XML-type available, but no XML query functionality.

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)

yes

standard with numerous extensions

APIs and other access methods

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

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP 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

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java
Perl
PHP
Python
Tcl

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

.Net
Java

with Android only
Objective-C
React Native
Swift

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

user defined functions

realized in proprietary language PL/pgSQL or with common languages like Perl, Python, Tcl etc.

limited functionality with using 'rules'

runs within the applications so server-side scripts are unnecessary

Triggers

yes

by integration with AWS Lambda

yes

Callbacks are triggered when data changes

yes

Change Listeners

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

horizontal partitioning

by hash, list or range

none

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

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

Eventual Consistency

if the client is offline
Immediate Consistency

if the client is online

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

Atomicity and isolation are supported for single operations

ACID

yes

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

yes, multi-version concurrency control (MVCC)

yes

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.

yes

In-Memory realm

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

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

yes, based on authentication and database rules

yes

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...
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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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