DBMS > Amazon SimpleDB vs. Cassandra vs. GigaSpaces vs. Google Cloud Bigtable vs. Newts

System Properties Comparison Amazon SimpleDB vs. Cassandra vs. GigaSpaces vs. Google Cloud Bigtable vs. Newts

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

High performance in-memory data grid platform, powering three products: Smart Cache, Smart ODS (Operational Data Store), Smart Augmented Transactions

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

Time Series DBMS based on Cassandra

Primary database model

Key-value store

Wide column store

Document store
Object oriented DBMS

Values are user defined objects

Key-value store
Wide column store

Time Series DBMS

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

Graph DBMS
Search engine

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	0.97
Rank	#192	Overall
	#32	Document stores
	#6	Object oriented DBMS

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

Score	0.00
Rank	#383	Overall
	#41	Time Series DBMS

Website

aws.amazon.com/simpledb

cassandra.apache.org

www.gigaspaces.com

cloud.google.com/bigtable

opennms.github.io/newts

Technical documentation

docs.aws.amazon.com/simpledb

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

docs.gigaspaces.com/latest/landing.html

cloud.google.com/bigtable/docs

github.com/OpenNMS/newts/wiki

Developer

Amazon

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Gigaspaces Technologies

Google

OpenNMS Group

Initial release

2007

2008

2000

2015

2014

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

15.5, September 2020

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

Apache Version 2; Commercial licenses available

commercial

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.

Implementation language

Java

Java, C++, .Net

Java

Server operating systems

hosted

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
macOS
Solaris
Windows

hosted

Linux
OS X
Windows

Data scheme

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.

XML can be used for describing objects metadata

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)

SQL-99 for query and DML statements

APIs and other access methods

RESTful HTTP API

Proprietary protocol

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

GigaSpaces LRMI
Hibernate
JCache
JDBC
JPA
ODBC
RESTful HTTP API
Spring Data

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

HTTP REST
Java API

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

.Net
C++
Java
Python
Scala

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

Java

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

Triggers

yes

yes, event driven architecture

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Sharding must be implemented in the application

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

Sharding

based on Cassandra

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

Multi-source replication

synchronous or asynchronous
Source-replica replication

synchronous or asynchronous

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

selectable replication factor

based on Cassandra

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

Map-Reduce pattern can be built with XAP task executors

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

Consistency level configurable: ALL, QUORUM, ANY

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

Eventual Consistency

based on Cassandra
Immediate Consistency

based on Cassandra

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

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

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.

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

Role-based access control

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

Apache Cassandra is the leading NoSQL, distributed database management system, well...
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Competitive advantages

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Typical application scenarios

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

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