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

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

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

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

Scalable Graph Database platform making enterprise data available by exploiting inferred entities and relationships

Primary database model

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

Key-value store

Document store
RDF 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	2.02
Rank	#125	Overall
	#12	Graph DBMS

Score	4.08
Rank	#76	Overall
	#5	Wide column stores

Score	0.23
Rank	#316	Overall
	#27	Graph DBMS

Website

aws.amazon.com/simpledb

Technical documentation

docs.aws.amazon.com/simpledb

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

docs.janusgraph.org

docs.scylladb.com

terminusdb.github.io/terminusdb/#

Developer

Amazon

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Linux Foundation; originally developed as Titan by Aurelius

ScyllaDB

DataChemist Ltd.

Initial release

2007

2008

2017

2015

2018

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

0.6.3, February 2023

ScyllaDB Open Source 5.4.1, January 2024

11.0.0, January 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

Open Source (AGPL), commercial license available

Open Source

GPL V3

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++

Prolog, Rust

Server operating systems

hosted

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
OS X
Unix
Windows

Linux

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

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

cluster global secondary indices

SQL

Support of SQL

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

SQL-like DML and DDL statements (CQL)

SQL-like query language (WOQL)

APIs and other access methods

RESTful HTTP API

Proprietary protocol

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

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

OWL
RESTful HTTP API
WOQL (Web Object Query Language)

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

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

JavaScript
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

yes, Lua

yes

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"

yes

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

Sharding

Graph Partitioning

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

yes

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

Journaling Streams

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

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency
Tunable Consistency

can be individually decided for each write operation

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Relationships in graphs

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

ACID

Atomicity and isolation are supported for single operations

ACID

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 journaling

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

User authentification and security via Rexster Graph Server

Access rights for users can be defined per object

Role-based access control

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Apache Cassandra is the leading NoSQL, distributed database management system, well...
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ScyllaDB is engineered to deliver predictable performance at scale. It’s adopted...
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Competitive advantages

No single point of failure ensures 100% availability . Operational simplicity for...
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Highly-performant (efficiently utilizes full resources of a node and network; millions...
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Typical application scenarios

Internet of Things (IOT), fraud detection applications, recommendation engines, product...
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ScyllaDB is ideal for applications that require high throughput and low latency at...
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Key customers

Apple, Netflix, Uber, ING,, Intuit,Fidelity, NY Times, Outbrain, BazaarVoice, Best...
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Discord, Epic Games, Expedia, Zillow, Comcast, Disney+ Hotstar, Samsung, ShareChat,...
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Market metrics

Cassandra is used by 40% of the Fortune 100.
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ScyllaDB typically offers ~75% total cost of ownership savings, with ~5X higher throughput...
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Licensing and pricing models

Apache licenseÂ Pricing for commercial distributions provided by DataStax and available...
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ScyllaDB Open Source - free open source software (AGPL) ScyllaDB Enterprise - subscription-based...
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