DBMS > Amazon SimpleDB vs. CouchDB vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Realm vs. STSdb

System Properties Comparison Amazon SimpleDB vs. CouchDB vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Realm vs. STSdb

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

A native JSON - document store inspired by Lotus Notes, scalable from globally distributed server-clusters down to mobile phones.

Globally distributed, horizontally scalable, multi-model database service

A DBMS built for use on mobile devices that’s a fast, easy to use alternative to SQLite and Core Data

Key-Value Store with special method for indexing

optimized for high performance using a special indexing method

Primary database model

Key-value store

Document store

Document store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store
Wide column store

Document store

Key-value store

Secondary database models

Spatial DBMS

using the Geocouch extension

Spatial DBMS

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

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

Score	10.26
Rank	#45	Overall
	#7	Document stores

Score	29.85
Rank	#27	Overall
	#4	Document stores
	#2	Graph DBMS
	#3	Key-value stores
	#3	Wide column stores

Score	7.71
Rank	#52	Overall
	#9	Document stores

Score	0.06
Rank	#365	Overall
	#55	Key-value stores

Website

aws.amazon.com/simpledb

couchdb.apache.org

azure.microsoft.com/services/cosmos-db

realm.io

github.com/STSSoft/STSdb4

Technical documentation

docs.aws.amazon.com/simpledb

docs.couchdb.org/en/stable

learn.microsoft.com/azure/cosmos-db

realm.io/docs

Developer

Amazon

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top-level project, originally developed by Damien Katz, a former Lotus Notes developer

Microsoft

Realm, acquired by MongoDB in May 2019

STS Soft SC

Initial release

2007

2005

2014

2011

Current release

3.3.3, December 2023

4.0.8, September 2015

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Apache version 2

commercial

Open Source

GPLv2, 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.

Implementation language

Erlang

Server operating systems

hosted

Android
BSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

hosted

Android
Backend: server-less
iOS
Windows

Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

JSON types

yes

primitive types and user defined types (classes)

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

via views

yes

All properties auto-indexed by default

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like query language

APIs and other access methods

RESTful HTTP API

RESTful HTTP/JSON API

DocumentDB API
Graph API (Gremlin)
MongoDB API
RESTful HTTP API
Table API

.NET Client API

Supported programming languages

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

C
C#
ColdFusion
Erlang
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Lisp
Lua
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
PL/SQL
Python
Ruby
Smalltalk

.Net
C#
Java
JavaScript
JavaScript (Node.js)
MongoDB client drivers written for various programming languages
Python

.Net
Java

with Android only
Objective-C
React Native
Swift

C#
Java

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

View functions in JavaScript

JavaScript

runs within the applications so server-side scripts are unnecessary

Triggers

yes

JavaScript

yes

Change Listeners

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Sharding must be implemented in the application

Sharding

improved architecture with release 2.0

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

none

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

with Hadoop integration

Integration with Hadoop/HDInsight on Azure*

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

can be specified for read operations

Eventual Consistency

Bounded Staleness
Consistent Prefix
Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Consistency level configurable on request level
Session Consistency

Immediate Consistency

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

atomic operations within a single document possible

Multi-item ACID transactions with snapshot isolation within a partition

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

strategy: optimistic locking

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.

yes

In-Memory realm

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 database

Access rights can be defined down to the item level

yes

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