DBMS > Amazon SimpleDB vs. Couchbase vs. FoundationDB vs. GBase vs. NuoDB

System Properties Comparison Amazon SimpleDB vs. Couchbase vs. FoundationDB vs. GBase vs. NuoDB

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Created as commercial project in 2013, FoundationDB has been acquired by Apple in March 2015 and was withdrawn from the market. As a consequence, the product was removed from the DB-Engines ranking. In April 2018, Apple open-sourced FoundationDB and it therefore reappears in the ranking.

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 distributed document store with integrated cache, a powerful search engine, in-built operational and analytical capabilities, and an embedded mobile database

Ordered key-value store. Core features are complimented by layers.

Widely used RDBMS in China, including analytical, transactional, distributed transactional, and cloud-native data warehousing.

NuoDB is a webscale distributed database that supports SQL and ACID transactions

Primary database model

Key-value store

Document store

supported via specific layer
Key-value store
Relational DBMS

supported via specific SQL-layer

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Key-value store

originating from the former Membase product and supporting the Memcached protocol
Spatial DBMS

using the Geocouch extension
Search engine
Time Series DBMS
Vector DBMS

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

Score	1.85
Rank	#138	Overall
	#24	Key-value stores

Score	17.30
Rank	#36	Overall
	#5	Document stores

Score	1.03
Rank	#190	Overall
	#31	Document stores
	#28	Key-value stores
	#89	Relational DBMS

Score	1.07
Rank	#185	Overall
	#86	Relational DBMS

Score	0.89
Rank	#198	Overall
	#92	Relational DBMS

Website

aws.amazon.com/simpledb

www.couchbase.com

github.com/apple/foundationdb

www.gbase.cn

www.3ds.com/nuodb-distributed-sql-database

Technical documentation

docs.aws.amazon.com/simpledb

docs.couchbase.com

apple.github.io/foundationdb

doc.nuodb.com

Developer

Amazon

Couchbase, Inc.

FoundationDB

General Data Technology Co., Ltd.

Dassault Systèmes

originally NuoDB, Inc.

Initial release

2007

2011

2013

2004

2013

Current release

Server: 7.2, June 2023; Mobile: 3.1, March 2022; Couchbase Capella (DBaaS), June 2023

6.2.28, November 2020

GBase 8a, GBase 8s, GBase 8c

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Business Source License (BSL 1.1); Commercial licenses also available

Open Source

Apache 2.0

commercial

limited edition free

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

C, C++, Go and Erlang

C++

C, Java, Python

C++

Server operating systems

hosted

Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux

hosted

Amazon EC2, Windows Azure, SoftLayer
Linux
OS X
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

some layers support schemas

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

some layers support typing

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.

yes

Secondary indexes

yes

All columns are indexed automatically

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL++, extends ANSI SQL to JSON for operational, transactional, and analytic use cases

supported in specific SQL layer only

Standard with numerous extensions

yes

APIs and other access methods

RESTful HTTP API

CLI Client
HTTP REST
Kafka Connector
Native language bindings for CRUD, Query, Search and Analytics APIs
Spark Connector
Spring Data

ADO.NET
C API
JDBC
ODBC

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC

Supported programming languages

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

.Net
C
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Kotlin
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

.Net
C
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
PHP
Python
Ruby
Swift

.Net
C
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

Functions and timers in JavaScript and UDFs in Java, Python, SQL++

in SQL-layer only

user defined functions

Java, SQL

Triggers

yes

via the TAP protocol

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Sharding must be implemented in the application

Automatic Sharding

Sharding

horizontal partitioning (by range, list and hash) and vertical partitioning

data is dynamically stored/cached on the nodes where it is read/written

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

Multi-source replication

including cross data center replication
Source-replica replication

yes

Managed transparently by NuoDB

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

selectable on a per-operation basis

Linearizable consistency

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

in SQL-layer only

yes

Transaction concepts

Support to ensure data integrity after non-atomic manipulations of data

Concurrent data updates can be detected by the application

ACID

tunable commit protocol

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

MVCC

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

Ephemeral buckets

yes

Temporary table

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users and roles can be defined via the AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM)

User and Administrator separation with password-based and LDAP integrated Authentication. Role-base access control.

yes

Standard SQL roles/ privileges, Administrative Users

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