DBMS > Amazon SimpleDB vs. FoundationDB vs. Microsoft Azure Table Storage vs. SAP SQL Anywhere vs. SQLite

System Properties Comparison Amazon SimpleDB vs. FoundationDB vs. Microsoft Azure Table Storage vs. SAP SQL Anywhere vs. SQLite

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Created as commercial project in 2013, FoundationDB has been acquired by Apple in March 2015 and was withdrawn from the market.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

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

A Wide Column Store for rapid development using massive semi-structured datasets

RDBMS database and synchronization technologies for server, desktop, remote office, and mobile environments

Widely used embeddable, in-process RDBMS

Primary database model

Key-value store

Document store

supported via specific layer
Key-value store
Relational DBMS

supported via specific SQL-layer

Wide column store

Relational DBMS

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

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

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

Score	4.48
Rank	#75	Overall
	#6	Wide column stores

Score	4.25
Rank	#79	Overall
	#43	Relational DBMS

Score	114.32
Rank	#10	Overall
	#7	Relational DBMS

Website

aws.amazon.com/simpledb

github.com/apple/foundationdb

azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/storage/tables

www.sap.com/products/technology-platform/sql-anywhere.html

www.sqlite.org

Technical documentation

docs.aws.amazon.com/simpledb

apple.github.io/foundationdb

help.sap.com/docs/SAP_SQL_Anywhere

www.sqlite.org/docs.html

Developer

Amazon

FoundationDB

Microsoft

SAP

formerly Sybase

Dwayne Richard Hipp

Initial release

2007

2013

2012

1992

2000

Current release

6.2.28, November 2020

17, July 2015

3.45.3 (15 April 2024), April 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Apache 2.0

commercial

Open Source

Public Domain

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++

Server operating systems

hosted

Linux
OS X
Windows

hosted

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

server-less

Data scheme

schema-free

some layers support schemas

schema-free

yes

dynamic column types

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

some layers support typing

yes

not rigid because of 'dynamic typing' concept.

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

supported in specific SQL layer only

yes

SQL-92 is not fully supported

APIs and other access methods

RESTful HTTP API

ADO.NET
HTTP API
JDBC
ODBC

ADO.NET

inofficial driver
JDBC

inofficial driver
ODBC

inofficial driver

Supported programming languages

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

.Net
C
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
PHP
Python
Ruby
Swift

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

C
C#
C++
Delphi
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

Actionscript
Ada
Basic
C
C#
C++
D
Delphi
Forth
Fortran
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Lisp
Lua
MatLab
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
PL/SQL
Python
R
Ruby
Scala
Scheme
Smalltalk
Tcl

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

in SQL-layer only

yes, in C/C++, Java, .Net or Perl

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Sharding must be implemented in the application

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

implicit feature of the cloud service. Replication either local, cross-facility or geo-redundant.

Source-replica replication

Database mirroring

none

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

can be specified for read operations

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

optimistic locking

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

via file-system locks

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

User concepts

Access control

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

Access rights based on private key authentication or shared access signatures

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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