DBMS > Amazon DynamoDB vs. ClickHouse vs. Datomic vs. Postgres-XL vs. VoltDB

System Properties Comparison Amazon DynamoDB vs. ClickHouse vs. Datomic vs. Postgres-XL vs. VoltDB

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

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

A high-performance, column-oriented SQL DBMS for online analytical processing (OLAP) that uses all available system resources to their full potential to process each analytical query as fast as possible. It is available as both an open-source software and a cloud offering.

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

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

Distributed In-Memory NewSQL RDBMS

Used for OLTP applications with a high frequency of relatively simple transactions, that can hold all their data in memory

Primary database model

Document store
Key-value store

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Time Series DBMS

Document store
Spatial DBMS

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	15.55
Rank	#38	Overall
	#23	Relational DBMS

Score	1.66
Rank	#144	Overall
	#66	Relational DBMS

Score	0.53
Rank	#254	Overall
	#117	Relational DBMS

Score	1.47
Rank	#157	Overall
	#73	Relational DBMS

Website

aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

Technical documentation

docs.aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

clickhouse.com/docs

docs.datomic.com

www.postgres-xl.org/documentation

docs.voltdb.com

Developer

Amazon

Clickhouse Inc.

Cognitect

VoltDB Inc.

Initial release

2012

2016

2012

2014

since 2012, originally named StormDB

2010

Current release

v24.4.1.2088-stable, May 2024

1.0.7075, December 2023

10 R1, October 2018

11.3, April 2022

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free tier for a limited amount of database operations

Open Source

Apache 2.0

commercial

limited edition free

Open Source

Mozilla public license

Open Source

AGPL for Community Edition, commercial license for Enterprise, AWS, and Pro Editions

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.

Aiven for Clickhouse: Managed cloud data warehousing with high-speed analytics.
ClickHouse Cloud: Get the performance you love from open source ClickHouse in a serverless offering that takes care of the details so you can spend more time getting insight out of the fastest database on earth.
DoubleCloud: Fully managed ClickHouse alongside best-in-class managed open-source services to build analytics at scale.

Implementation language

C++

Java, Clojure

Java, C++

Server operating systems

hosted

FreeBSD
Linux
macOS

All OS with a Java VM

Linux
macOS

Linux
OS X

for development

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

XML type, but no XML query functionality

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

Close to ANSI SQL (SQL/JSON + extensions)

yes

distributed, parallel query execution

yes

only a subset of SQL 99

APIs and other access methods

RESTful HTTP API

gRPC
HTTP REST
JDBC
MySQL wire protocol
ODBC
PostgreSQL wire protocol
Proprietary protocol

RESTful HTTP API

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

Java API
JDBC
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Supported programming languages

.Net
ColdFusion
Erlang
Groovy
Java
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

3rd party library
C++
Elixir

3rd party library
Go

3rd party library
Java

3rd party library
JavaScript (Node.js)

3rd party library
Kotlin

3rd party library
Nim

3rd party library
Perl

3rd party library
PHP

3rd party library
Python

3rd party library
R

3rd party library
Ruby

3rd party library
Rust
Scala

3rd party library

Clojure
Java

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

C#
C++
Erlang

not officially supported
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
PHP
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

Transaction Functions

user defined functions

Java

Triggers

yes

by integration with AWS Lambda

By using transaction functions

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

key based and custom

none

But extensive use of caching in the application peers

horizontal partitioning

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

Asynchronous and synchronous physical replication; geographically distributed replicas; support for object storages.

none

But extensive use of caching in the application peers

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)

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

FOREIGN KEY constraints are not supported

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

MVCC

ACID

Transactions are executed single-threaded within stored procedures

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Data access is serialized by the server

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

using external storage systems (e.g. Cassandra, DynamoDB, PostgreSQL, Couchbase and others)

yes

Snapshots and command logging

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

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 and roles. Column and row based policies. Quotas and resource limits. Pluggable authentication with LDAP and Kerberos. Password based, X.509 certificate, and SSH key authentication.

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Users and roles with access to stored procedures

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