DBMS > Amazon DynamoDB vs. H2 vs. HarperDB vs. Oracle vs. PostgreSQL

System Properties Comparison Amazon DynamoDB vs. H2 vs. HarperDB vs. Oracle vs. PostgreSQL

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

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

Full-featured RDBMS with a small footprint, either embedded into a Java application or used as a database server.

Ultra-low latency distributed database with an intuitive REST API supporting NoSQL and SQL (including joins). Deployment of functions and databases simultaneously with a consolidated node-level architecture.

Widely used RDBMS

Widely used open source RDBMS

Developed as objectoriented DBMS (Postgres), gradually enhanced with 'standards' like SQL

Primary database model

Document store
Key-value store

Relational DBMS

Document store

Relational DBMS

with object oriented extensions, e.g.: user defined types/functions and inheritance. Handling of key/value pairs with hstore module.

Secondary database models

Spatial DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS

with Oracle Spatial and Graph
RDF store

with Oracle Spatial and Graph
Spatial DBMS

with Oracle Spatial and Graph
Vector DBMS

since Oracle 23

Document store
Graph DBMS

with Apache Age
Spatial DBMS
Vector DBMS

with pgvector extension

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	8.13
Rank	#49	Overall
	#31	Relational DBMS

Score	0.55
Rank	#248	Overall
	#38	Document stores

Score	1236.29
Rank	#1	Overall
	#1	Relational DBMS

Score	645.54
Rank	#4	Overall
	#4	Relational DBMS

Website

aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

www.h2database.com

www.harperdb.io

www.oracle.com/database

www.postgresql.org

Technical documentation

docs.aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

www.h2database.com/html/main.html

docs.harperdb.io/docs

docs.oracle.com/en/database

www.postgresql.org/docs

Developer

Amazon

Thomas Mueller

HarperDB

Oracle

PostgreSQL Global Development Group

www.postgresql.org/developer

Initial release

2012

2005

2017

1980

1989

1989: Postgres, 1996: PostgreSQL

Current release

2.2.220, July 2023

3.1, August 2021

23c, September 2023

16.3, May 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free tier for a limited amount of database operations

Open Source

dual-licence (Mozilla public license, Eclipse public license)

commercial

free community edition available

commercial

restricted free version is available

Open Source

BSD

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

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Implementation language

Java

Node.js

C and C++

Server operating systems

hosted

All OS with a Java VM

Linux
OS X

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows
z/OS

FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
NetBSD
OpenBSD
OS X
Solaris
Unix
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

dynamic schema

yes

Schemaless in JSON and XML columns

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

JSON data types

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

specific XML-type available, but no XML query functionality.

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

SQL-like data manipulation statements

yes

with proprietary extensions

yes

standard with numerous extensions

APIs and other access methods

RESTful HTTP API

JDBC
ODBC

JDBC
ODBC
React Hooks
RESTful HTTP/JSON API
WebSocket

JDBC
ODBC
ODP.NET
Oracle Call Interface (OCI)

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

Supported programming languages

.Net
ColdFusion
Erlang
Groovy
Java
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

Java

.Net
C
C#
C++
ColdFusion
D
Dart
Delphi
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Lisp
MatLab
Objective C
Perl
PHP
PowerShell
Prolog
Python
R
Ruby
Rust
Scala
Swift

C
C#
C++
Clojure
Cobol
Delphi
Eiffel
Erlang
Fortran
Groovy
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Lisp
Objective C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Scala
Tcl
Visual Basic

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java

JDBC
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
Tcl

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

Java Stored Procedures and User-Defined Functions

Custom Functions

since release 3.1

PL/SQL

also stored procedures in Java possible

user defined functions

realized in proprietary language PL/pgSQL or with common languages like Perl, Python, Tcl etc.

Triggers

yes

by integration with AWS Lambda

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

none

A table resides as a whole on one (or more) nodes in a cluster

Sharding, horizontal partitioning

partitioning by range, list and (since PostgreSQL 11) by hash

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

With clustering: 2 database servers on different computers operate on identical copies of a database

yes

the nodes on which a table resides can be defined

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

Source-replica replication

other methods possible by using 3rd party extensions

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

may be implemented via Amazon Elastic MapReduce (Amazon EMR)

can be realized in PL/SQL

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

can be specified for read operations

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 execution of specific operations

ACID

isolation level can be parameterized

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

yes, multi-version concurrency control (MVCC)

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

yes, using LMDB

yes

In-memory capabilities

Is there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.

yes

Version 12c introduced the new option 'Oracle Database In-Memory'

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 and roles

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

More information provided by the system vendor

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Conferences, events and webinars

more DBMS events

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Las Vegas, 9-12 September 2024

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Webinar, 10-11am CT / 4-5pm BST, 22 May 2024

Recent citations in the news

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14 May 2024, AWS Blog

Using Elasticsearch to Offload Search and Analytics from DynamoDB: Pros and Cons
10 May 2024, hackernoon.com

Zendesk Moves from DynamoDB to MySQL and S3 to Save over 80% in Costs
29 December 2023, InfoQ.com

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