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

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

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

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

Popular in-memory data platform used as a cache, message broker, and database that can be deployed on-premises, across clouds, and hybrid environments

Redis focuses on performance so most of its design decisions prioritize high performance and very low latencies.

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

Key-value store

Multiple data types and a rich set of operations, as well as configurable data expiration, eviction and persistence

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
Spatial DBMS

Document store

with RedisJSON
Graph DBMS

with RedisGraph
Spatial DBMS
Search engine

with RediSearch
Time Series DBMS

with RedisTimeSeries
Vector 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	1.66
Rank	#144	Overall
	#66	Relational DBMS

Score	0.53
Rank	#254	Overall
	#117	Relational DBMS

Score	155.94
Rank	#6	Overall
	#1	Key-value stores

Score	1.47
Rank	#157	Overall
	#73	Relational DBMS

Website

aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

Technical documentation

docs.aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

docs.datomic.com

www.postgres-xl.org/documentation

docs.redis.com/latest/index.html
redis.io/docs

docs.voltdb.com

Developer

Amazon

Cognitect

Redis project core team, inspired by Salvatore Sanfilippo

Development sponsored by Redis Inc.

VoltDB Inc.

Initial release

2012

2014

since 2012, originally named StormDB

2009

2010

Current release

1.0.7075, December 2023

10 R1, October 2018

7.2.5, May 2024

11.3, April 2022

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free tier for a limited amount of database operations

commercial

limited edition free

Open Source

Mozilla public license

Open Source

source-available extensions (modules), commercial licenses for Redis Enterprise

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 Redis: Fully managed in-memory key-value store for all your caching and speedy lookup needs.

Implementation language

Java, Clojure

Java, C++

Server operating systems

hosted

All OS with a Java VM

Linux
macOS

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

ported and maintained by Microsoft Open Technologies, Inc.

Linux
OS X

for development

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

partial

Supported data types are strings, hashes, lists, sets and sorted sets, bit arrays, hyperloglogs and geospatial indexes

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

with RediSearch module

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

distributed, parallel query execution

with RediSQL module

yes

only a subset of SQL 99

APIs and other access methods

RESTful HTTP API

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

proprietary protocol

RESP - REdis Serialization Protocol

Java API
JDBC
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Supported programming languages

.Net
ColdFusion
Erlang
Groovy
Java
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

Clojure
Java

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

C
C#
C++
Clojure
Crystal
D
Dart
Elixir
Erlang
Fancy
Go
Haskell
Haxe
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Lisp
Lua
MatLab
Objective-C
OCaml
Pascal
Perl
PHP
Prolog
Pure Data
Python
R
Rebol
Ruby
Rust
Scala
Scheme
Smalltalk
Swift
Tcl
Visual Basic

C#
C++
Erlang

not officially supported
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
PHP
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

Transaction Functions

user defined functions

Lua; Redis Functions coming in Redis 7 (slides and Github)

Java

Triggers

yes

by integration with AWS Lambda

By using transaction functions

yes

publish/subscribe channels provide some trigger functionality; RedisGears

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

none

But extensive use of caching in the application peers

horizontal partitioning

Sharding

Automatic hash-based sharding with support for hash-tags for manual sharding

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

none

But extensive use of caching in the application peers

Multi-source replication

with Redis Enterprise Pack
Source-replica replication

Chained replication is supported

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)

through RedisGears

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

can be specified for read operations

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency
Causal consistency can be enabled in Active-Active databases
Strong consistency with Redis Raft
Strong eventual consistency with Active-Active

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

Atomic execution of command blocks and scripts and optimistic locking

ACID

Transactions are executed single-threaded within stored procedures

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Data access is serialized by the server

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

Configurable mechanisms for persistency via snapshots and/or operations logs

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

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

Access Control Lists (ACLs): redis.io/docs/management/security/acl
LDAP and Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) for Redis Enterprise
Mutual TLS authentication: redis.io/docs/management/security/encryption
Password-based authentication

Users and roles with access to stored procedures

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