DBMS > Amazon DynamoDB vs. Datomic vs. DuckDB vs. Postgres-XL vs. ScyllaDB

System Properties Comparison Amazon DynamoDB vs. Datomic vs. DuckDB vs. Postgres-XL vs. ScyllaDB

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

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

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

An embeddable, in-process, column-oriented SQL OLAP RDBMS

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

Cassandra and DynamoDB compatible wide column store

Primary database model

Document store
Key-value store

Relational DBMS

Wide column store

Secondary database models

Document store
Spatial DBMS

Key-value store

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	1.59
Rank	#150	Overall
	#69	Relational DBMS

Score	4.57
Rank	#74	Overall
	#40	Relational DBMS

Score	0.49
Rank	#256	Overall
	#117	Relational DBMS

Score	4.75
Rank	#68	Overall
	#5	Wide column stores

Website

aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

Technical documentation

docs.aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

docs.datomic.com

duckdb.org/docs

www.postgres-xl.org/documentation

docs.scylladb.com

Developer

Amazon

Cognitect

ScyllaDB

Initial release

2012

2018

2014

since 2012, originally named StormDB

2015

Current release

1.0.6735, June 2023

0.10, February 2024

10 R1, October 2018

ScyllaDB Open Source 5.4.1, January 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free tier for a limited amount of database operations

commercial

limited edition free

Open Source

MIT License

Open Source

Mozilla public license

Open Source

Open Source (AGPL), commercial license 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.

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Implementation language

Java, Clojure

C++

Server operating systems

hosted

All OS with a Java VM

server-less

Linux
macOS

Linux

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free

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

cluster global secondary indices

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

distributed, parallel query execution

SQL-like DML and DDL statements (CQL)

APIs and other access methods

RESTful HTTP API

Arrow Database Connectivity (ADBC)
CLI Client
JDBC
ODBC

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

Proprietary protocol (CQL)

compatible with CQL (Cassandra Query Language, an SQL-like language)
RESTful HTTP API (DynamoDB compatible)
Thrift

Supported programming languages

.Net
ColdFusion
Erlang
Groovy
Java
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

Clojure
Java

C
C#

3rd party driver
C++
Crystal

3rd party driver
Go

3rd party driver
Java
Lisp

3rd party driver
Python
R
Ruby

3rd party driver
Rust
Swift
Zig

3rd party driver

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

For CQL interface: C#, C++, Clojure, Erlang, Go, Haskell, Java, JavaScript, Node.js, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, Rust, Scala
For DynamoDB interface: .Net, ColdFusion, Erlang, Groovy, Java, JavaScript, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

Transaction Functions

user defined functions

yes, Lua

Triggers

yes

by integration with AWS Lambda

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

none

horizontal partitioning

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

none

But extensive use of caching in the application peers

none

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

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

Eventual Consistency
Tunable Consistency

can be individually decided for each write operation

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

MVCC

Atomicity and isolation are supported for single operations

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

yes, multi-version concurrency control (MVCC)

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

in-memory tables

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 can be defined per object

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

ScyllaDB is engineered to deliver predictable performance at scale. It’s adopted...
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Competitive advantages

Highly-performant (efficiently utilizes full resources of a node and network; millions...
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Typical application scenarios

ScyllaDB is ideal for applications that require high throughput and low latency at...
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Key customers

Discord, Epic Games, Expedia, Zillow, Comcast, Disney+ Hotstar, Samsung, ShareChat,...
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Market metrics

ScyllaDB typically offers ~75% total cost of ownership savings, with ~5X higher throughput...
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Licensing and pricing models

ScyllaDB Open Source - free open source software (AGPL) ScyllaDB Enterprise - subscription-based...
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