DBMS > Amazon DynamoDB vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Oracle Berkeley DB vs. OrientDB vs. Sphinx

System Properties Comparison Amazon DynamoDB vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Oracle Berkeley DB vs. OrientDB vs. Sphinx

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

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

Globally distributed, horizontally scalable, multi-model database service

Widely used in-process key-value store

Multi-model DBMS (Document, Graph, Key/Value)

Open source search engine for searching in data from different sources, e.g. relational databases

Primary database model

Document store
Key-value store

Document store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store
Wide column store

Key-value store

supports sorted and unsorted key sets
Native XML DBMS

in the Oracle Berkeley DB XML version

Document store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store

Search engine

Secondary database models

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	29.04
Rank	#27	Overall
	#4	Document stores
	#2	Graph DBMS
	#3	Key-value stores
	#3	Wide column stores

Score	2.21
Rank	#117	Overall
	#20	Key-value stores
	#3	Native XML DBMS

Score	3.19
Rank	#93	Overall
	#16	Document stores
	#7	Graph DBMS
	#14	Key-value stores

Score	5.98
Rank	#56	Overall
	#5	Search engines

Website

aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

azure.microsoft.com/services/cosmos-db

www.oracle.com/database/technologies/related/berkeleydb.html

orientdb.org

sphinxsearch.com

Technical documentation

docs.aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

learn.microsoft.com/azure/cosmos-db

docs.oracle.com/cd/E17076_05/html/index.html

www.orientdb.com/docs/last/index.html

sphinxsearch.com/docs

Developer

Amazon

Microsoft

Oracle

originally developed by Sleepycat, which was acquired by Oracle

OrientDB LTD; CallidusCloud; SAP

Sphinx Technologies Inc.

Initial release

2012

2014

1994

2010

2001

Current release

18.1.40, May 2020

3.2.29, March 2024

3.5.1, February 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free tier for a limited amount of database operations

commercial

Open Source

commercial license available

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

GPL version 2, commercial licence 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, Java, C++ (depending on the Berkeley DB edition)

Java

C++

Server operating systems

hosted

AIX
Android
FreeBSD
iOS
Linux
OS X
Solaris
VxWorks
Windows

All OS with a Java JDK (>= JDK 6)

FreeBSD
Linux
NetBSD
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

Schema can be enforced for whole record ("schema-full") or for some fields only ("schema-hybrid")

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

only with the Berkeley DB XML edition

Secondary indexes

yes

All properties auto-indexed by default

yes

full-text index on all search fields

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like query language

yes

SQL interfaced based on SQLite is available

SQL-like query language, no joins

SQL-like query language (SphinxQL)

APIs and other access methods

RESTful HTTP API

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

Tinkerpop technology stack with Blueprints, Gremlin, Pipes
Java API
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Proprietary protocol

Supported programming languages

.Net
ColdFusion
Erlang
Groovy
Java
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

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

.Net

Figaro is a .Net framework assembly that extends Berkeley DB XML into an embeddable database engine for .NET
others

Third-party libraries to manipulate Berkeley DB files are available for many languages
C
C#
C++
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)

3rd party binding
Perl
Python
Tcl

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

C++

unofficial client library
Java
Perl

unofficial client library
PHP
Python
Ruby

unofficial client library

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

JavaScript

Java, Javascript

Triggers

yes

by integration with AWS Lambda

JavaScript

yes

only for the SQL API

Hooks

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

none

Sharding

Partitioning is done manually, search queries against distributed index is supported

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

Source-replica replication

Multi-source replication

none

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*

could be achieved with distributed queries

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

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

relationship in graphs

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

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

The original contents of fields are not stored in the Sphinx index.

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 can be defined down to the item level

Access rights for users and roles; record level security configurable

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