DBMS > Amazon DynamoDB vs. FoundationDB vs. GeoMesa vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. SAP SQL Anywhere

System Properties Comparison Amazon DynamoDB vs. FoundationDB vs. GeoMesa vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. SAP SQL Anywhere

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Created as commercial project in 2013, FoundationDB has been acquired by Apple in March 2015 and was withdrawn from the market.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

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

GeoMesa is a distributed spatio-temporal DBMS based on various systems as storage layer.

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

RDBMS database and synchronization technologies for server, desktop, remote office, and mobile environments

Primary database model

Document store
Key-value store

Document store

supported via specific layer
Key-value store
Relational DBMS

supported via specific SQL-layer

Spatial DBMS

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

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

Score	0.78
Rank	#213	Overall
	#4	Spatial DBMS

Score	824.29
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	4.25
Rank	#79	Overall
	#43	Relational DBMS

Website

aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

github.com/apple/foundationdb

www.geomesa.org

www.microsoft.com/en-us/sql-server

www.sap.com/products/technology-platform/sql-anywhere.html

Technical documentation

docs.aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

apple.github.io/foundationdb

www.geomesa.org/documentation/stable/user/index.html

learn.microsoft.com/en-US/sql/sql-server

help.sap.com/docs/SAP_SQL_Anywhere

Developer

Amazon

FoundationDB

CCRi and others

Microsoft

SAP

formerly Sybase

Initial release

2012

2013

2014

1989

1992

Current release

6.2.28, November 2020

4.0.5, February 2024

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

17, July 2015

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free tier for a limited amount of database operations

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

Apache License 2.0

commercial

restricted free version is available

commercial

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++

Scala

C++

Server operating systems

hosted

Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
Windows

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Data scheme

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.

yes

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

supported in specific SQL layer only

yes

APIs and other access methods

RESTful HTTP API

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
OLE DB
Tabular Data Stream (TDS)

ADO.NET
HTTP API
JDBC
ODBC

Supported programming languages

.Net
ColdFusion
Erlang
Groovy
Java
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

.Net
C
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
PHP
Python
Ruby
Swift

C#
C++
Delphi
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Visual Basic

C
C#
C++
Delphi
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

in SQL-layer only

Transact SQL, .NET languages, R, Python and (with SQL Server 2019) Java

yes, in C/C++, Java, .Net or Perl

Triggers

yes

by integration with AWS Lambda

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

depending on storage layer

tables can be distributed across several files (horizontal partitioning); sharding through federation

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

depending on storage layer

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

Source-replica replication

Database mirroring

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

Linearizable consistency

depending on storage layer

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

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

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

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.

depending on storage layer

yes

User concepts

Access control

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

yes

depending on the DBMS used for storage

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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