DBMS > Amazon DynamoDB vs. CockroachDB vs. FoundationDB vs. Interbase vs. Postgres-XL

System Properties Comparison Amazon DynamoDB vs. CockroachDB vs. FoundationDB vs. Interbase vs. Postgres-XL

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Created as commercial project in 2013, FoundationDB has been acquired by Apple in March 2015 and was withdrawn from the market. As a consequence, the product was removed from the DB-Engines ranking. In April 2018, Apple open-sourced FoundationDB and it therefore reappears in the ranking.

Description

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

CockroachDB is a distributed database architected for modern cloud applications. It is wire compatible with PostgreSQL and backed by a Key-Value Store, which is either RocksDB or a purpose-built derivative, called Pebble.

Ordered key-value store. Core features are complimented by layers.

Light-weight proven RDBMS

originally from Borland

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

Primary database model

Document store
Key-value store

Relational DBMS

Document store

supported via specific layer
Key-value store
Relational DBMS

supported via specific SQL-layer

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

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	6.15
Rank	#55	Overall
	#33	Relational DBMS

Score	1.03
Rank	#190	Overall
	#31	Document stores
	#28	Key-value stores
	#89	Relational DBMS

Score	4.61
Rank	#72	Overall
	#39	Relational DBMS

Score	0.49
Rank	#256	Overall
	#117	Relational DBMS

Website

aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

www.cockroachlabs.com

github.com/apple/foundationdb

www.embarcadero.com/products/interbase

www.postgres-xl.org

Technical documentation

docs.aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

www.cockroachlabs.com/docs

apple.github.io/foundationdb

docs.embarcadero.com/products/interbase

www.postgres-xl.org/documentation

Developer

Amazon

Cockroach Labs

FoundationDB

Embarcadero

Initial release

2012

2015

2013

1984

2014

since 2012, originally named StormDB

Current release

24.1.0, May 2024

6.2.28, November 2020

InterBase 2020, December 2019

10 R1, October 2018

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free tier for a limited amount of database operations

Open Source

Apache 2.0, commercial license available

Open Source

Apache 2.0

commercial

Open Source

Mozilla public license

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

C++

Server operating systems

hosted

Linux
macOS
Windows

Linux
OS X
Windows

Android
iOS
Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
macOS

Data scheme

schema-free

dynamic schema

schema-free

some layers support schemas

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

some layers support typing

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.

export as XML data possible

yes

XML type, but no XML query functionality

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes, wire compatible with PostgreSQL

supported in specific SQL layer only

yes

distributed, parallel query execution

APIs and other access methods

RESTful HTTP API

JDBC

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC

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

Supported programming languages

.Net
ColdFusion
Erlang
Groovy
Java
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

C#
C++
Clojure
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby
Rust

.Net
C
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
PHP
Python
Ruby
Swift

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java
Object Pascal
PHP
Ruby

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

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

in SQL-layer only

yes

Interbase procedure and trigger language

user defined functions

Triggers

yes

by integration with AWS Lambda

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

horizontal partitioning (by key range)

all tables are translated to an ordered KV store and then broken down into 64MB ranges, which are then used as replicas in RAFT

Sharding

none

horizontal partitioning

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

Multi-source replication using RAFT

yes

Interbase Change Views

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

Linearizable consistency

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

in SQL-layer only

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

MVCC

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Multiversion concurreny control

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

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users and roles can be defined via the AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM)

Role-based access control

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

More information provided by the system vendor

We invite representatives of system vendors to contact us for updating and extending the system information,
and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.