DBMS > Amazon SimpleDB vs. Cassandra vs. Google Cloud Bigtable vs. Microsoft Azure Table Storage vs. NuoDB

System Properties Comparison Amazon SimpleDB vs. Cassandra vs. Google Cloud Bigtable vs. Microsoft Azure Table Storage vs. NuoDB

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

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

A Wide Column Store for rapid development using massive semi-structured datasets

NuoDB is a webscale distributed database that supports SQL and ACID transactions

Primary database model

Key-value store

Wide column store

Key-value store
Wide column store

Wide column store

Relational DBMS

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

Score	4.48
Rank	#75	Overall
	#6	Wide column stores

Score	0.89
Rank	#198	Overall
	#92	Relational DBMS

Website

aws.amazon.com/simpledb

cassandra.apache.org

cloud.google.com/bigtable

azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/storage/tables

www.3ds.com/nuodb-distributed-sql-database

Technical documentation

docs.aws.amazon.com/simpledb

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

cloud.google.com/bigtable/docs

doc.nuodb.com

Developer

Amazon

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Google

Microsoft

Dassault Systèmes

originally NuoDB, Inc.

Initial release

2007

2008

2015

2012

2013

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Apache version 2

commercial

limited edition free

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

C++

Server operating systems

hosted

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

hosted

Amazon EC2, Windows Azure, SoftLayer
Linux
OS X
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

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

SQL

Support of SQL

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

yes

APIs and other access methods

RESTful HTTP API

Proprietary protocol

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

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

RESTful HTTP API

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC

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++
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

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

.Net
C
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

Java, SQL

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"

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

data is dynamically stored/cached on the nodes where it is read/written

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

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

yes

implicit feature of the cloud service. Replication either local, cross-facility or geo-redundant.

yes

Managed transparently by NuoDB

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)

Immediate Consistency

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

optimistic locking

ACID

tunable commit protocol

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

MVCC

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

Temporary table

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

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

Access rights based on private key authentication or shared access signatures

Standard SQL roles/ privileges, Administrative Users

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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