DBMS > Amazon DynamoDB vs. IBM Db2 vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Microsoft SQL Server

System Properties Comparison Amazon DynamoDB vs. IBM Db2 vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Microsoft SQL Server

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

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

Common in IBM host environments, 2 different versions for host and Windows/Linux

Globally distributed, horizontally scalable, multi-model database service

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

Primary database model

Document store
Key-value store

Relational DBMS

Since Version 10.5 support for JSON/BSON documents compatible with MongoDB

Document store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store
Wide column store

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
RDF store

in Db2 LUW (Linux, Unix, Windows)
Spatial DBMS

with Db2 Spatial Extender

Spatial DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	77.57
Rank	#16	Overall
	#2	Document stores
	#2	Key-value stores

Score	127.49
Rank	#8	Overall
	#5	Relational DBMS

Score	29.85
Rank	#27	Overall
	#4	Document stores
	#2	Graph DBMS
	#3	Key-value stores
	#3	Wide column stores

Score	829.80
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Website

aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

www.ibm.com/products/db2

azure.microsoft.com/services/cosmos-db

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

Technical documentation

docs.aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

www.ibm.com/docs/en/db2

learn.microsoft.com/azure/cosmos-db

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

Developer

Amazon

IBM

Microsoft

Initial release

2012

1983

host version

2014

1989

Current release

12.1, October 2016

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free tier for a limited amount of database operations

commercial

free version is available

commercial

restricted free version is 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.

Implementation language

C and C++

C++

Server operating systems

hosted

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
Solaris
Windows
z/OS

hosted

Linux
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

JSON 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

Secondary indexes

yes

All properties auto-indexed by default

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

SQL-like query language

yes

APIs and other access methods

RESTful HTTP API

ADO.NET
JDBC
JSON style queries

MongoDB compatible
ODBC
XQuery

DocumentDB API
Graph API (Gremlin)
MongoDB API
RESTful HTTP API
Table API

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

Supported programming languages

.Net
ColdFusion
Erlang
Groovy
Java
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

C
C#
C++
Cobol
Delphi
Fortran
Java
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Visual Basic

.Net
C#
Java
JavaScript
JavaScript (Node.js)
MongoDB client drivers written for various programming languages
Python

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

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

JavaScript

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

Triggers

yes

by integration with AWS Lambda

yes

JavaScript

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

only with Windows/Unix/Linux Version

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

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

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

with separate tools (MQ, InfoSphere)

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

may be implemented via Amazon Elastic MapReduce (Amazon EMR)

with Hadoop integration

Integration with Hadoop/HDInsight on Azure*

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

can be specified for read operations

Bounded Staleness
Consistent Prefix
Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Consistency level configurable on request level
Session Consistency

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

Multi-item ACID transactions with snapshot isolation within a partition

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.

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 rights can be defined down to the item level

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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