DBMS > Amazon SimpleDB vs. Google Cloud Spanner vs. IBM Db2 vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

System Properties Comparison Amazon SimpleDB vs. Google Cloud Spanner vs. IBM Db2 vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

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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 horizontally scalable, globally consistent, relational database service. It is the externalization of the core Google database that runs the biggest aspects of Google, like Ads and Google Play.

Common in IBM host environments, 2 different versions for host and Windows/Linux

Globally distributed, horizontally scalable, multi-model database service

Primary database model

Key-value store

Relational DBMS

Since Version 10.5 support for JSON/BSON documents compatible with MongoDB

Document store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store
Wide column store

Secondary database models

Document store
RDF store

in Db2 LUW (Linux, Unix, Windows)
Spatial DBMS

with Db2 Spatial Extender

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	2.89
Rank	#103	Overall
	#52	Relational DBMS

Score	128.46
Rank	#8	Overall
	#5	Relational DBMS

Score	29.04
Rank	#27	Overall
	#4	Document stores
	#2	Graph DBMS
	#3	Key-value stores
	#3	Wide column stores

Website

aws.amazon.com/simpledb

cloud.google.com/spanner

www.ibm.com/products/db2

azure.microsoft.com/services/cosmos-db

Technical documentation

docs.aws.amazon.com/simpledb

cloud.google.com/spanner/docs

www.ibm.com/docs/en/db2

learn.microsoft.com/azure/cosmos-db

Developer

Amazon

Google

IBM

Microsoft

Initial release

2007

2017

1983

host version

2014

Current release

12.1, October 2016

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free version is available

commercial

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 and C++

Server operating systems

hosted

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
Solaris
Windows
z/OS

hosted

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

JSON types

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

All properties auto-indexed by default

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

Query statements complying to ANSI 2011

yes

SQL-like query language

APIs and other access methods

RESTful HTTP API

gRPC (using protocol buffers) API
JDBC

At present, JDBC supports read-only queries. No support for DDL or DML statements.
RESTful HTTP API

ADO.NET
JDBC
JSON style queries

MongoDB compatible
ODBC
XQuery

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

Supported programming languages

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

Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

C
C#
C++
Cobol
Delphi
Fortran
Java
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Visual Basic

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

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

JavaScript

Triggers

yes

JavaScript

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Sharding must be implemented in the application

Sharding

only with Windows/Unix/Linux Version

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

Multi-source replication with 3 replicas for regional instances.

yes

with separate tools (MQ, InfoSphere)

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

using Google Cloud Dataflow

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

Immediate Consistency

Bounded Staleness
Consistent Prefix
Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Consistency level configurable on request level
Session Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

by using interleaved tables, this features focuses more on performance improvements than on referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

Concurrent data updates can be detected by the application

ACID

Strict serializable isolation

ACID

Multi-item ACID transactions with snapshot isolation within a partition

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

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, groups and roles based on Google Cloud Identity and Access Management (IAM)

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Access rights can be defined down to the item level

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