DBMS > Amazon SimpleDB vs. Apache Impala vs. Cassandra

System Properties Comparison Amazon SimpleDB vs. Apache Impala vs. Cassandra

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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

Analytic DBMS for Hadoop

Wide-column store based on ideas of BigTable and DynamoDB

Optimized for write access

Primary database model

Key-value store

Relational DBMS

Wide column store

Secondary database models

Document store

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

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

Score	1.88
Rank	#139	Overall
	#24	Key-value stores

Score	14.03
Rank	#40	Overall
	#24	Relational DBMS

Score	103.86
Rank	#12	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Website

aws.amazon.com/simpledb

impala.apache.org

cassandra.apache.org

Technical documentation

docs.aws.amazon.com/simpledb

impala.apache.org/impala-docs.html

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

Developer

Amazon

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top-level project, originally developed by Cloudera

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Initial release

2007

2013

2008

Current release

4.1.0, June 2022

4.1.3, July 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Apache Version 2

Open Source

Apache version 2

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

C++

Java

Server operating systems

hosted

Linux

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

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.

Secondary indexes

yes

All columns are indexed automatically

yes

restricted

only equality queries, not always the best performing solution

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like DML and DDL statements

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

APIs and other access methods

RESTful HTTP API

JDBC
ODBC

Proprietary protocol

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

Supported programming languages

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

All languages supporting JDBC/ODBC

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

user defined functions and integration of map-reduce

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"

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

query execution via MapReduce

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

can be specified for read operations

Eventual Consistency

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

can be individually decided for each write operation

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

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, groups and roles

based on Apache Sentry and Kerberos

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...
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Competitive advantages

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