DBMS > Amazon DynamoDB vs. Citus vs. Datomic vs. HarperDB

System Properties Comparison Amazon DynamoDB vs. Citus vs. Datomic vs. HarperDB

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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

Scalable hybrid operational and analytics RDBMS for big data use cases based on PostgreSQL

Datomic builds on immutable values, supports point-in-time queries and uses 3rd party systems for durability

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.

Primary database model

Document store
Key-value store

Relational DBMS

Document store

Secondary database models

Document store

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

Score	77.57
Rank	#16	Overall
	#2	Document stores
	#2	Key-value stores

Score	2.15
Rank	#123	Overall
	#60	Relational DBMS

Score	1.76
Rank	#145	Overall
	#66	Relational DBMS

Score	0.55
Rank	#252	Overall
	#38	Document stores

Website

aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

www.citusdata.com

www.datomic.com

www.harperdb.io

Technical documentation

docs.aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

docs.citusdata.com

docs.datomic.com

docs.harperdb.io/docs

Developer

Amazon

Cognitect

HarperDB

Initial release

2012

2010

2012

2017

Current release

8.1, December 2018

1.0.6735, June 2023

3.1, August 2021

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free tier for a limited amount of database operations

Open Source

AGPL, commercial license also available

commercial

limited edition free

commercial

free community edition available

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

Java, Clojure

Node.js

Server operating systems

hosted

Linux

All OS with a Java VM

Linux
OS X

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

dynamic schema

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

JSON data types

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

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

standard, with numerous extensions

SQL-like data manipulation statements

APIs and other access methods

RESTful HTTP API

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

RESTful HTTP API

JDBC
ODBC
React Hooks
RESTful HTTP/JSON API
WebSocket

Supported programming languages

.Net
ColdFusion
Erlang
Groovy
Java
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

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

Clojure
Java

.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

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

user defined functions

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

yes

Transaction Functions

Custom Functions

since release 3.1

Triggers

yes

by integration with AWS Lambda

yes

By using transaction functions

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

none

But extensive use of caching in the application peers

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

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

Source-replica replication

other methods possible by using 3rd party extensions

none

But extensive use of caching in the application peers

yes

the nodes on which a table resides can be defined

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

may be implemented via Amazon Elastic MapReduce (Amazon EMR)

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

can be specified for read operations

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

ACID

Atomic execution of specific operations

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, using LMDB

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)

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Access rights for users and roles

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