DBMS > Amazon SimpleDB vs. Cassandra vs. RethinkDB vs. Riak TS vs. Spark SQL

System Properties Comparison Amazon SimpleDB vs. Cassandra vs. RethinkDB vs. Riak TS vs. Spark SQL

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

DBMS for the Web with a mechanism to push updated query results to applications in realtime.

Riak TS is a distributed NoSQL database optimized for time series data and based on Riak KV

Spark SQL is a component on top of 'Spark Core' for structured data processing

Primary database model

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

Spatial DBMS

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	2.74
Rank	#105	Overall
	#19	Document stores

Score	0.20
Rank	#319	Overall
	#27	Time Series DBMS

Score	18.96
Rank	#33	Overall
	#20	Relational DBMS

Website

aws.amazon.com/simpledb

cassandra.apache.org

rethinkdb.com

spark.apache.org/sql

Technical documentation

docs.aws.amazon.com/simpledb

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

rethinkdb.com/docs

www.tiot.jp/riak-docs/riak/ts/latest

spark.apache.org/docs/latest/sql-programming-guide.html

Developer

Amazon

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

The Linux Foundation

since July 2017

Open Source, formerly Basho Technologies

Apache Software Foundation

Initial release

2007

2008

2009

2015

2014

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

2.4.1, August 2020

3.0.0, September 2022

3.5.0 ( 2.13), September 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

Apache Version 2

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

C++

Erlang

Scala

Server operating systems

hosted

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
OS X

Linux
OS X
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

string, binary, float, bool, date, geometry

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

restricted

SQL

Support of SQL

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

yes, limited

SQL-like DML and DDL statements

APIs and other access methods

RESTful HTTP API

Proprietary protocol

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

HTTP API
Native Erlang Interface

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

community-supported driver
C#

community-supported driver
C++

community-supported driver
Clojure

community-supported driver
Dart

community-supported driver
Erlang

community-supported driver
Go

community-supported driver
Haskell

community-supported driver
Java

official driver
JavaScript (Node.js)

official driver
Lisp

community-supported driver
Lua

community-supported driver
Objective-C

community-supported driver
Perl

community-supported driver
PHP

community-supported driver
Python

official driver
Ruby

official driver
Scala

community-supported driver

unofficial client library
C#
C++

unofficial client library
Clojure

unofficial client library
Dart

unofficial client library
Erlang
Go

unofficial client library
Groovy

unofficial client library
Haskell

unofficial client library
Java
JavaScript

unofficial client library
Lisp

unofficial client library
Perl

unofficial client library
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

unofficial client library
Smalltalk

unofficial client library

Java
Python
R
Scala

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

Erlang

Triggers

yes

Client-side triggers through changefeeds

yes

pre-commit hooks and post-commit hooks

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

range based

Sharding

yes, utilizing Spark Core

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

Source-replica replication

selectable replication factor

none

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

Eventual Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

links between datasets can be stored

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-document operations

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

MVCC based

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 can be defined per object

yes

users and table-level permissions

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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