DBMS > Amazon SimpleDB vs. Cassandra vs. Firebird vs. OpenSearch vs. TinkerGraph

System Properties Comparison Amazon SimpleDB vs. Cassandra vs. Firebird vs. OpenSearch vs. TinkerGraph

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

Firebird is an open source RDBMS forked from Borland's InterBase

A distributed, RESTful search and analytics engine forked from Elasticsearch and based on Apache Lucene

A lightweight, in-memory graph engine that serves as a reference implementation of the TinkerPop3 API

Primary database model

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

Vector DBMS

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	20.82
Rank	#30	Overall
	#18	Relational DBMS

Score	16.36
Rank	#37	Overall
	#4	Search engines

Score	0.08
Rank	#348	Overall
	#35	Graph DBMS

Website

aws.amazon.com/simpledb

cassandra.apache.org

www.firebirdsql.org

github.com/opensearch-project
opensearch.org

tinkerpop.apache.org/docs/current/reference/#tinkergraph-gremlin

Technical documentation

docs.aws.amazon.com/simpledb

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

www.firebirdsql.org/en/reference-manuals

opensearch.org/docs/latest

Developer

Amazon

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Firebird Foundation

Amazon Web Services

Initial release

2007

2008

2000

As fork of Borland's InterBase

2021

2009

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

5.0.0, January 2024

2.5.0, January 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

Initial Developer's Public License

Open Source

Apache Version 2.0

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.

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

Aiven for OpenSearch: Fully managed open source search and analytics suite. Out-of-the-box integrations get you up and running in a couple of clicks.
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Implementation language

Java

C and C++

Java

Server operating systems

hosted

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

AIX
FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
server-less

Firebird Embedded Server
Solaris
Unix
Windows

All OS with a Java VM

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free

Flexible type definitions. Once a type is defined, it is persistent

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.

Secondary indexes

yes

All columns are indexed automatically

restricted

only equality queries, not always the best performing solution

yes

All search fields are automatically indexed

SQL

Support of SQL

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

yes

SQL-like query language

APIs and other access methods

RESTful HTTP API

Proprietary protocol

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

ADO.NET
C/C++ API
JDBC

Jaybird
ODBC
OLE DB

Java API
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

TinkerPop 3

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

C
C#
C++
Delphi
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Lua
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby

Elasticsearch client

Groovy
Java

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

PSQL

yes

Triggers

yes

by using the 'percolation' feature

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

none

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

yes

none

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

Eventual Consistency

Synchronous doc based replication. Get by ID may show delays up to 1 sec. Configurable write consistency: one, quorum, all

none

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Relationships in graphs

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

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Features a multi-generational MVCC architecture, readers do not block writers

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

optional

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 for users can be defined per object

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Apache Cassandra is the leading NoSQL, distributed database management system, well...
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OpenSearch is a highly scalable and extensible open-source software suite for search,...
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Competitive advantages

No single point of failure ensures 100% availability . Operational simplicity for...
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Distributed as fully open source under Apache License, Version 2.0 (ALv2), OpenSearch...
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Typical application scenarios

Internet of Things (IOT), fraud detection applications, recommendation engines, product...
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The OpenSearch platform is used across a broad range of search , analytics, and observability...
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Key customers

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

Market metrics

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

Licensing and pricing models

Apache licenseÂ Pricing for commercial distributions provided by DataStax and available...
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The OpenSearch Project offers open source software licensed under Apache License...
» more

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