DBMS > Amazon DynamoDB vs. FoundationDB vs. Google Cloud Bigtable vs. Informix vs. TerminusDB

System Properties Comparison Amazon DynamoDB vs. FoundationDB vs. Google Cloud Bigtable vs. Informix vs. TerminusDB

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Created as commercial project in 2013, FoundationDB has been acquired by Apple in March 2015 and was withdrawn from the market.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

Google's NoSQL Big Data database service. It's the same database that powers many core Google services, including Search, Analytics, Maps, and Gmail.

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

Scalable Graph Database platform making enterprise data available by exploiting inferred entities and relationships

Primary database model

Document store
Key-value store

Document store

supported via specific layer
Key-value store
Relational DBMS

supported via specific SQL-layer

Key-value store
Wide column store

Relational DBMS

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

Graph DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
Spatial DBMS
Time Series DBMS

with Informix TimeSeries Extension

Document store
RDF store

DB-Engines Ranking measures the popularity of database management systems
Trend Chart

Score	70.06
Rank	#17	Overall
	#3	Document stores
	#2	Key-value stores

Score	0.97
Rank	#191	Overall
	#32	Document stores
	#28	Key-value stores
	#87	Relational DBMS

Score	2.97
Rank	#92	Overall
	#15	Key-value stores
	#8	Wide column stores

Score	16.32
Rank	#35	Overall
	#21	Relational DBMS

Score	0.19
Rank	#311	Overall
	#27	Graph DBMS

Website

aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

github.com/apple/foundationdb

cloud.google.com/bigtable

www.ibm.com/products/informix

terminusdb.com

Technical documentation

docs.aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

apple.github.io/foundationdb

cloud.google.com/bigtable/docs

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

terminusdb.github.io/terminusdb/#

Developer

Amazon

FoundationDB

Google

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.

DataChemist Ltd.

Initial release

2012

2013

2015

1984

2018

Current release

6.2.28, November 2020

14.10.FC5, November 2020

11.0.0, January 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free tier for a limited amount of database operations

Open Source

Apache 2.0

commercial

free developer edition available

Open Source

GPL V3

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++

C, C++ and Java

Prolog, Rust

Server operating systems

hosted

Linux
OS X
Windows

hosted

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
macOS
Solaris
Windows

Linux

Data scheme

schema-free

some layers support schemas

schema-free

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

some layers support typing

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

supported in specific SQL layer only

yes

SQL-like query language (WOQL)

APIs and other access methods

RESTful HTTP API

gRPC (using protocol buffers) API
HappyBase (Python library)
HBase compatible API (Java)

JDBC
JSON API

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

OWL
RESTful HTTP API
WOQL (Web Object Query Language)

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++
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

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

JavaScript
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

in SQL-layer only

yes

Triggers

yes

by integration with AWS Lambda

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

Graph Partitioning

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

Internal replication in Colossus, and regional replication between two clusters in different zones

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

Journaling Streams

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

Immediate consistency (for a single cluster), Eventual consistency (for two or more replicated clusters)

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

Atomic single-row operations

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

in-memory journaling

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)

Access rights for users, groups and roles based on Google Cloud Identity and Access Management (IAM)

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

Role-based access control

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