DBMS > Amazon DynamoDB vs. CockroachDB vs. IBM Cloudant vs. Informix vs. Realm

System Properties Comparison Amazon DynamoDB vs. CockroachDB vs. IBM Cloudant vs. Informix vs. Realm

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

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.

Database as a Service offering based on Apache CouchDB

A secure embeddable database from IBM, positioned besides IBM Db2 as a relatively low-cost product optimized for OLTP and Internet of Things 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

Relational DBMS

Document store

Relational DBMS

Since Version 12.10 support for JSON/BSON datatypes compatible with MongoDB

Document store

Secondary database models

Document store
Spatial DBMS
Time Series DBMS

with Informix TimeSeries Extension

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	5.73
Rank	#58	Overall
	#34	Relational DBMS

Score	2.75
Rank	#104	Overall
	#19	Document stores

Score	17.12
Rank	#34	Overall
	#21	Relational DBMS

Score	7.41
Rank	#52	Overall
	#8	Document stores

Website

aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

www.cockroachlabs.com

www.ibm.com/products/cloudant

www.ibm.com/products/informix

realm.io

Technical documentation

docs.aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

www.cockroachlabs.com/docs

cloud.ibm.com/docs/Cloudant

informix.hcldoc.com
www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SSGU8G/welcomeIfxServers.html

realm.io/docs

Developer

Amazon

Cockroach Labs

IBM, Apache Software Foundation

IBM acquired Cloudant in February 2014

IBM, HCL Technologies

Effective May 1st, 2017, HCL took on development, technical support, and product management teams, and works jointly with IBM on product strategy, marketing, and sales.

Realm, acquired by MongoDB in May 2019

Initial release

2012

2015

2010

1984

2014

Current release

24.1.0, May 2024

14.10.FC5, November 2020

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free tier for a limited amount of database operations

Open Source

Apache 2.0, commercial license available

commercial

free developer edition available

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.

Implementation language

Erlang

C, C++ and Java

Server operating systems

hosted

Linux
macOS
Windows

hosted

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
macOS
Solaris
Windows

Android
Backend: server-less
iOS
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

dynamic schema

schema-free

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

Since Version 12.10 support for JSON/BSON datatypes

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.

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes, wire compatible with PostgreSQL

yes

APIs and other access methods

RESTful HTTP API

JDBC

RESTful HTTP/JSON API

JDBC
JSON API

MongoDB compatible
MQTT (Message Queue Telemetry Transport)
ODBC
RESTful HTTP API

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

C#
Java
JavaScript
Objective-C
PHP
Ruby

.Net
C
C++
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby

.Net
Java

with Android only
Objective-C
React Native
Swift

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

View functions (Map-Reduce) in JavaScript

yes

runs within the applications so server-side scripts are unnecessary

Triggers

yes

by integration with AWS Lambda

yes

Change Listeners

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

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

Multi-source replication using RAFT

Multi-source replication
Source-replica 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

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency

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 operations within a document possible

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Optimistic locking

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)

Role-based access control

Access rights for users can be defined per database

Users with fine-grained authentication, authorization, and auditing controls

yes

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