DBMS > Amazon SimpleDB vs. ArangoDB vs. Cassandra vs. HEAVY.AI vs. Lovefield

System Properties Comparison Amazon SimpleDB vs. ArangoDB vs. Cassandra vs. HEAVY.AI vs. Lovefield

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Hosted simple database service by Amazon, with the data stored in the Amazon Cloud.

There is an unrelated product called SimpleDB developed by Edward Sciore

Native multi-model DBMS for graph, document, key/value and search. All in one engine and accessible with one query language.

Wide-column store based on ideas of BigTable and DynamoDB

Optimized for write access

A high performance, column-oriented RDBMS, specifically developed to harness the massive parallelism of modern CPU and GPU hardware

Embeddable relational database for web apps written in pure JavaScript

Primary database model

Key-value store

Document store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store
Search engine

Wide column store

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

Spatial DBMS

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

Score	1.85
Rank	#138	Overall
	#24	Key-value stores

Score	3.32
Rank	#90	Overall
	#15	Document stores
	#5	Graph DBMS
	#12	Key-value stores
	#10	Search engines

Score	101.89
Rank	#12	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	1.77
Rank	#141	Overall
	#65	Relational DBMS

Score	0.29
Rank	#293	Overall
	#133	Relational DBMS

Website

aws.amazon.com/simpledb

arangodb.com

cassandra.apache.org

github.com/heavyai/heavydb
www.heavy.ai

google.github.io/lovefield

Technical documentation

docs.aws.amazon.com/simpledb

docs.arangodb.com

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

docs.heavy.ai

github.com/google/lovefield/blob/master/docs/spec_index.md

Social network pages

Developer

Amazon

ArangoDB Inc.

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

HEAVY.AI, Inc.

Google

Initial release

2007

2012

2008

2016

2014

Current release

3.11.5, November 2023

4.1.3, July 2023

5.10, January 2022

2.1.12, February 2017

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Apache Version 2; Commercial license (Enterprise) available

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

Apache Version 2; enterprise edition available

Open Source

Apache 2.0

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.

ArangoDB Cloud –The Managed Cloud Service of ArangoDB. Provides fully managed, and monitored cluster deployments of any size, with enterprise-grade security. Get started for free and continue for as little as $0,21/hour.

Astra DB: Multi-cloud DBaaS built on Apache Cassandra.

Implementation language

C++

Java

C++ and CUDA

JavaScript

Server operating systems

hosted

Linux
OS X
Windows

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux

server-less, requires a JavaScript environment (browser, Node.js)

tested with Chrome, Firefox, IE, Safari

Data scheme

schema-free

automatically recognizes schema within a collection

schema-free

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

string, double, boolean, list, hash

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

All columns are indexed automatically

yes

restricted

only equality queries, not always the best performing solution

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like SELECT, DML and DDL statements (CQL)

yes

SQL-like query language

via JavaScript builder pattern

APIs and other access methods

RESTful HTTP API

AQL
Foxx Framework
Graph API (Gremlin)
GraphQL query language
HTTP API
Java & SpringData
JSON style queries
VelocyPack/VelocyStream

Proprietary protocol

CQL (Cassandra Query Language, an SQL-like language)
Thrift

JDBC
ODBC
Thrift
Vega

Supported programming languages

.Net
C
C++
Erlang
Java
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

C#
C++
Clojure
Elixir
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
R
Rust

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

All languages supporting JDBC/ODBC/Thrift
Python

JavaScript

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

JavaScript

Triggers

yes

Using read-only observers

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Sharding must be implemented in the application

Sharding

since version 2.0

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

Sharding

Round robin

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

Source-replica replication with configurable replication factor

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

Multi-source replication

none

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

can be done with stored procedures in JavaScript

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

can be specified for read operations

Eventual Consistency

configurable per collection or per write
Immediate Consistency
OneShard (highly available, fault-tolerant deployment mode with ACID semantics)

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

can be individually decided for each write operation

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

relationships in graphs

yes

Transaction concepts

Support to ensure data integrity after non-atomic manipulations of data

Concurrent data updates can be detected by the application

ACID

Atomicity and isolation are supported for single operations

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

yes, by using IndexedDB or the cloud service Firebase Realtime Database

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

using MemoryDB

User concepts

Access control

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

yes

Access rights for users can be defined per object

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Graph and Beyond. With more than 11,000 stargazers on GitHub, ArangoDB is the leading...
» more

Apache Cassandra is the leading NoSQL, distributed database management system, well...
» more

Competitive advantages

Consolidation: As a native multi-model database, can be used as a full blown document...
» more

No single point of failure ensures 100% availability . Operational simplicity for...
» more

Typical application scenarios

Native multi-model in ArangoDB is being used for a broad range of projects across...
» more

Internet of Things (IOT), fraud detection applications, recommendation engines, product...
» more

Key customers

Cisco, Barclays, Refinitive, Siemens Mentor, Kabbage, Liaison, Douglas, MakeMyTrip,...
» more

Apple, Netflix, Uber, ING,, Intuit,Fidelity, NY Times, Outbrain, BazaarVoice, Best...
» more

Market metrics

ArangoDB is the leading native multi-model database with over 11,000 stargazers on...
» more

Cassandra is used by 40% of the Fortune 100.
» more

Licensing and pricing models

Very permissive Apache 2 License for Community Edition & commercial licenses are...
» more

Apache licenseÂ Pricing for commercial distributions provided by DataStax and available...
» more

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