DBMS > Amazon SimpleDB vs. Cassandra vs. GraphDB vs. JanusGraph vs. ScyllaDB

System Properties Comparison Amazon SimpleDB vs. Cassandra vs. GraphDB vs. JanusGraph vs. ScyllaDB

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

Enterprise-ready RDF and graph database with efficient reasoning, cluster and external index synchronization support. It supports also SQL JDBC access to Knowledge Graph and GraphQL over SPARQL.

A Graph DBMS optimized for distributed clusters

It was forked from the latest code base of Titan in January 2017

Cassandra and DynamoDB compatible wide column store

Primary database model

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

Key-value store

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

Score	1.88
Rank	#133	Overall
	#23	Key-value stores

Score	98.83
Rank	#12	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	3.25
Rank	#91	Overall
	#7	Graph DBMS
	#4	RDF stores

Score	2.02
Rank	#125	Overall
	#12	Graph DBMS

Score	4.08
Rank	#76	Overall
	#5	Wide column stores

Website

aws.amazon.com/simpledb

Technical documentation

docs.aws.amazon.com/simpledb

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

graphdb.ontotext.com/documentation

docs.janusgraph.org

docs.scylladb.com

Social network pages

Developer

Amazon

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Ontotext

Linux Foundation; originally developed as Titan by Aurelius

ScyllaDB

Initial release

2007

2008

2000

2017

2015

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

10.4, October 2023

0.6.3, February 2023

ScyllaDB Open Source 5.4.1, January 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Apache version 2

commercial

Some plugins of GraphDB Workbench are open sourced

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

Open Source (AGPL), commercial license available

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.

Scylla Cloud: Create real-time applications that run at global scale with Scylla Cloud, the industry’s most powerful NoSQL DBaaS

Implementation language

Java

C++

Server operating systems

hosted

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

All OS with a Java VM
Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
OS X
Unix
Windows

Linux

Data scheme

schema-free

schema-free and OWL/RDFS-schema support; RDF shapes

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.

Secondary indexes

yes

All columns are indexed automatically

restricted

only equality queries, not always the best performing solution

yes, supports real-time synchronization and indexing in SOLR/Elastic search/Lucene and GeoSPARQL geometry data indexes

yes

cluster global secondary indices

SQL

Support of SQL

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

stored SPARQL accessed as SQL using Apache Calcite through JDBC/ODBC

SQL-like DML and DDL statements (CQL)

APIs and other access methods

RESTful HTTP API

Proprietary protocol

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

GeoSPARQL
GraphQL
GraphQL Federation
Java API
JDBC
RDF4J API
RDFS
RIO
Sail API
Sesame REST HTTP Protocol
SPARQL 1.1

Java API
TinkerPop Blueprints
TinkerPop Frames
TinkerPop Gremlin
TinkerPop Rexster

Proprietary protocol (CQL)

compatible with CQL (Cassandra Query Language, an SQL-like language)
RESTful HTTP API (DynamoDB compatible)
Thrift

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#
Clojure
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

Clojure
Java
Python

For CQL interface: C#, C++, Clojure, Erlang, Go, Haskell, Java, JavaScript, Node.js, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, Rust, Scala
For DynamoDB interface: .Net, ColdFusion, Erlang, Groovy, Java, JavaScript, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

well-defined plugin interfaces; JavaScript server-side extensibility

yes

yes, Lua

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

yes

depending on the used storage backend (e.g. Cassandra, HBase, BerkeleyDB)

Sharding

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

yes

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

via Faunus, a graph analytics engine

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, Eventual consistency (configurable in cluster mode per master or individual client request)

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency
Tunable Consistency

can be individually decided for each write operation

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Constraint checking

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

Atomicity and isolation are supported for single operations

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

Supports various storage backends: Cassandra, HBase, Berkeley DB, Akiban, Hazelcast

yes

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

in-memory tables

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

Default Basic authentication through RDF4J client, or via Java when run with cURL, default token-based in the Workbench or via Rest API, optional access through OpenID or Kerberos single sign-on.

User authentification and security via Rexster Graph Server

Access rights for users can be defined per object

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

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

Ontotext GraphDB is a semantic database engine that allows organizations to build...
» more

ScyllaDB is engineered to deliver predictable performance at scale. It’s adopted...
» more

Competitive advantages

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

GraphDB allows you to link text and data in big knowledge graphs. It’s easy to experiment...
» more

Highly-performant (efficiently utilizes full resources of a node and network; millions...
» more

Typical application scenarios

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

Metadata enrichment and management, linked data publishing, semantic inferencing...
» more

ScyllaDB is ideal for applications that require high throughput and low latency at...
» more

Key customers

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

GraphDB provides a platform for building next-generation AI and Knowledge Graph...
» more

Discord, Epic Games, Expedia, Zillow, Comcast, Disney+ Hotstar, Samsung, ShareChat,...
» more

Market metrics

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

GraphDB is the most utilized semantic triplestore for mission-critical enterprise...
» more

ScyllaDB typically offers ~75% total cost of ownership savings, with ~5X higher throughput...
» more

Licensing and pricing models

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

GraphDB Free is a non-commercial version and is free to use. GraphDB Enterprise edition...
» more

ScyllaDB Open Source - free open source software (AGPL) ScyllaDB Enterprise - subscription-based...
» more

News

An Introduction to David Jones-Gilardi, Developer Relations
11 June 2024

Introducing Tejas Kumar, Developer Relations Engineer
7 June 2024

Indexing All of Wikipedia on a Laptop
5 June 2024

An Introduction to Phil Nash, Developer Relations
3 June 2024

Focus on Creativity, Not Clusters: DataStax Mission Control in Action!
30 May 2024

Riding the Databricks Wave with Hybrid Knowledge Graphs
6 June 2024

Matching Skills and Candidates with Graph RAG
31 May 2024

A Triple Store RAG Retriever
29 May 2024

Integrating GraphDB with Relational Database Systems
23 May 2024

Understanding the Graph Center of Excellence
17 May 2024

We invite representatives of system vendors to contact us for updating and extending the system information,
and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.