DBMS > Amazon DynamoDB vs. Citus vs. Datomic vs. Microsoft SQL Server

System Properties Comparison Amazon DynamoDB vs. Citus vs. Datomic vs. Microsoft SQL Server

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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

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

Primary database model

Document store
Key-value store

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

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	829.80
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Website

aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

www.citusdata.com

www.datomic.com

www.microsoft.com/en-us/sql-server

Technical documentation

docs.aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

docs.citusdata.com

docs.datomic.com

learn.microsoft.com/en-US/sql/sql-server

Developer

Amazon

Cognitect

Microsoft

Initial release

2012

2010

2012

1989

Current release

8.1, December 2018

1.0.6735, June 2023

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

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

restricted free version is 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

C++

Server operating systems

hosted

Linux

All OS with a Java VM

Linux
Windows

Data scheme

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

yes

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

standard, with numerous extensions

yes

APIs and other access methods

RESTful HTTP API

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

RESTful HTTP API

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
OLE DB
Tabular Data Stream (TDS)

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

C#
C++
Delphi
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Visual Basic

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

Transact SQL, .NET languages, R, Python and (with SQL Server 2019) Java

Triggers

yes

by integration with AWS Lambda

yes

By using transaction functions

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

none

But extensive use of caching in the application peers

tables can be distributed across several files (horizontal partitioning); sharding through federation

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, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

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

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

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

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