DBMS > Amazon SimpleDB vs. Cassandra vs. FileMaker vs. Google Cloud Bigtable

System Properties Comparison Amazon SimpleDB vs. Cassandra vs. FileMaker vs. Google Cloud Bigtable

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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

Wide-column store based on ideas of BigTable and DynamoDB

Optimized for write access

FileMaker is a cross-platform RDBMS that includes a GUI frontend.

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

Primary database model

Key-value store

Wide column store

Relational DBMS

Key-value store
Wide column store

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

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

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

Score	101.89
Rank	#12	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	48.20
Rank	#20	Overall
	#14	Relational DBMS

Score	3.26
Rank	#92	Overall
	#13	Key-value stores
	#8	Wide column stores

Website

aws.amazon.com/simpledb

cassandra.apache.org

www.claris.com/filemaker

cloud.google.com/bigtable

Technical documentation

docs.aws.amazon.com/simpledb

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

www.claris.com/resources/documentation

cloud.google.com/bigtable/docs

Developer

Amazon

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Claris

a subsidiary of Apple

Google

Initial release

2007

2008

1983

2015

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

19.4.1, November 2021

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Apache version 2

commercial

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.

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

Implementation language

Java

Server operating systems

hosted

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

iOS

client part only
Linux
OS X
Windows

hosted

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

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

A http query request can return the data in XML format

Secondary indexes

yes

All columns are indexed automatically

restricted

only equality queries, not always the best performing solution

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

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

yes

via plugins

APIs and other access methods

RESTful HTTP API

Proprietary protocol

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

Filemaker WebDirect
JDBC
ODBC

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

Supported programming languages

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

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

PHP

C#
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Sharding must be implemented in the application

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

none

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

Source-replica replication, warm standby

since Version 14

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

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

can be specified for read operations

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

can be individually decided for each write operation

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

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

Concurrent data updates can be detected by the application

Atomicity and isolation are supported for single operations

Atomic single-row operations

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.

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 can be defined per object

simple rights management via user accounts and connection to external directory services

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

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

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Competitive advantages

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Typical application scenarios

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Key customers

Apple, Netflix, Uber, ING,, Intuit,Fidelity, NY Times, Outbrain, BazaarVoice, Best...
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Market metrics

Cassandra is used by 40% of the Fortune 100.
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Licensing and pricing models

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