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  1. Stackups
  2. Application & Data
  3. NoSQL Databases
  4. NOSQL Database As A Service
  5. Amazon DynamoDB vs Cassandra

Amazon DynamoDB vs Cassandra

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Amazon DynamoDB
Amazon DynamoDB
Stacks4.0K
Followers3.2K
Votes195
Cassandra
Cassandra
Stacks3.6K
Followers3.5K
Votes507
GitHub Stars9.5K
Forks3.8K

Amazon DynamoDB vs Cassandra: What are the differences?

  1. Data Model: Amazon DynamoDB uses a NoSQL data model, specifically a key-value pair model, where each item is uniquely identified by a primary key. Cassandra, on the other hand, utilizes a column-family data model, which allows for more flexible schema design and faster querying by columns.

  2. Consistency Model: DynamoDB offers strong consistency, ensuring that when a read operation is performed, the latest version of an item is always returned. In contrast, Cassandra provides tunable consistency, allowing users to choose their desired level of consistency, trading off performance for data accuracy.

  3. Scalability: DynamoDB is fully managed by Amazon Web Services (AWS) and automatically scales horizontally to handle any amount of traffic or data, making it highly scalable. Cassandra also provides scalability through its distributed architecture, but it requires manual configuration and monitoring to ensure efficient scaling.

  4. Secondary Indexes: DynamoDB provides built-in support for secondary indexes, allowing users to query data using non-primary key attributes. Cassandra, on the other hand, requires users to design and manage their own secondary indexes, which can be more complex and error-prone.

  5. Query Language: DynamoDB uses AWS SDKs or API to interact with the database, whereas Cassandra provides its own query language called CQL (Cassandra Query Language), which is similar to SQL and allows for more expressive and relational-like querying.

  6. Durability and Availability: DynamoDB offers automatic data replication and multi-AZ deployments, ensuring high durability and availability. In contrast, Cassandra requires manual configuration for data replication and does not provide built-in multi-AZ support, requiring users to handle replication and fault-tolerance themselves.

In Summary, Amazon DynamoDB and Cassandra differ in their data models, consistency models, scalability approaches, secondary index support, query languages, and durability/availability features.

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Advice on Amazon DynamoDB, Cassandra

Doru
Doru

Solution Architect

Jun 9, 2019

ReviewonAmazon DynamoDBAmazon DynamoDB

I use Amazon DynamoDB because it integrates seamlessly with other AWS SaaS solutions and if cost is the primary concern early on, then this will be a better choice when compared to AWS RDS or any other solution that requires the creation of a HA cluster of IaaS components that will cost money just for being there, the costs not being influenced primarily by usage.

1.36k views1.36k
Comments
akash
akash

Aug 27, 2020

Needs adviceonCloud FirestoreCloud FirestoreFirebase Realtime DatabaseFirebase Realtime DatabaseAmazon DynamoDBAmazon DynamoDB

We are building a social media app, where users will post images, like their post, and make friends based on their interest. We are currently using Cloud Firestore and Firebase Realtime Database. We are looking for another database like Amazon DynamoDB; how much this decision can be efficient in terms of pricing and overhead?

199k views199k
Comments
emile
emile

developer at workjam

Nov 27, 2019

Decided

6 months ago we finished migrating the Workjam channels module datastore. Reasons for the switch was frustrations with AWS read/write capacities being frequently exceeded because of unplanned explosive growth, hard limitations on batch updates and interesting Cassandra features such as consistency tuning and Datastax's Solr integration. The decision to use Cassandra might not have been the most practical one as our needs would probably have been better served by a document store such as MongoDB, as we are not dealing with intense document update operations, but Cassandra was used throughout the company and the aim of stack uniformity was favoured over functional needs. We implemented the migration with the aim of incurring no downtime and the ability to rollback by sending write commands over AMQP. Overall the migration went smoothly, the devs learned all the powers of Cassandra and got acquainted with its many constraints. Datastax's Solr integration made the search implementation very simple but we were very disappointed in some of Datastax's Solr integration limitations (ex: search highlights being deprecated).

4.01k views4.01k
Comments

Detailed Comparison

Amazon DynamoDB
Amazon DynamoDB
Cassandra
Cassandra

With it , you can offload the administrative burden of operating and scaling a highly available distributed database cluster, while paying a low price for only what you use.

Partitioning means that Cassandra can distribute your data across multiple machines in an application-transparent matter. Cassandra will automatically repartition as machines are added and removed from the cluster. Row store means that like relational databases, Cassandra organizes data by rows and columns. The Cassandra Query Language (CQL) is a close relative of SQL.

Automated Storage Scaling – There is no limit to the amount of data you can store in a DynamoDB table, and the service automatically allocates more storage, as you store more data using the DynamoDB write APIs;Provisioned Throughput – When creating a table, simply specify how much request capacity you require. DynamoDB allocates dedicated resources to your table to meet your performance requirements, and automatically partitions data over a sufficient number of servers to meet your request capacity;Fully Distributed, Shared Nothing Architecture
-
Statistics
GitHub Stars
-
GitHub Stars
9.5K
GitHub Forks
-
GitHub Forks
3.8K
Stacks
4.0K
Stacks
3.6K
Followers
3.2K
Followers
3.5K
Votes
195
Votes
507
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 62
    Predictable performance and cost
  • 56
    Scalable
  • 35
    Native JSON Support
  • 21
    AWS Free Tier
  • 7
    Fast
Cons
  • 4
    Only sequential access for paginate data
  • 1
    Document Limit Size
  • 1
    Scaling
Pros
  • 119
    Distributed
  • 98
    High performance
  • 81
    High availability
  • 74
    Easy scalability
  • 53
    Replication
Cons
  • 3
    Reliability of replication
  • 1
    Size
  • 1
    Updates
Integrations
Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL
Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL
PostgreSQL
PostgreSQL
MySQL
MySQL
SQLite
SQLite
Azure Database for MySQL
Azure Database for MySQL
No integrations available

What are some alternatives to Amazon DynamoDB, Cassandra?

MongoDB

MongoDB

MongoDB stores data in JSON-like documents that can vary in structure, offering a dynamic, flexible schema. MongoDB was also designed for high availability and scalability, with built-in replication and auto-sharding.

MySQL

MySQL

The MySQL software delivers a very fast, multi-threaded, multi-user, and robust SQL (Structured Query Language) database server. MySQL Server is intended for mission-critical, heavy-load production systems as well as for embedding into mass-deployed software.

PostgreSQL

PostgreSQL

PostgreSQL is an advanced object-relational database management system that supports an extended subset of the SQL standard, including transactions, foreign keys, subqueries, triggers, user-defined types and functions.

Microsoft SQL Server

Microsoft SQL Server

Microsoft® SQL Server is a database management and analysis system for e-commerce, line-of-business, and data warehousing solutions.

SQLite

SQLite

SQLite is an embedded SQL database engine. Unlike most other SQL databases, SQLite does not have a separate server process. SQLite reads and writes directly to ordinary disk files. A complete SQL database with multiple tables, indices, triggers, and views, is contained in a single disk file.

Memcached

Memcached

Memcached is an in-memory key-value store for small chunks of arbitrary data (strings, objects) from results of database calls, API calls, or page rendering.

MariaDB

MariaDB

Started by core members of the original MySQL team, MariaDB actively works with outside developers to deliver the most featureful, stable, and sanely licensed open SQL server in the industry. MariaDB is designed as a drop-in replacement of MySQL(R) with more features, new storage engines, fewer bugs, and better performance.

RethinkDB

RethinkDB

RethinkDB is built to store JSON documents, and scale to multiple machines with very little effort. It has a pleasant query language that supports really useful queries like table joins and group by, and is easy to setup and learn.

ArangoDB

ArangoDB

A distributed free and open-source database with a flexible data model for documents, graphs, and key-values. Build high performance applications using a convenient SQL-like query language or JavaScript extensions.

InfluxDB

InfluxDB

InfluxDB is a scalable datastore for metrics, events, and real-time analytics. It has a built-in HTTP API so you don't have to write any server side code to get up and running. InfluxDB is designed to be scalable, simple to install and manage, and fast to get data in and out.

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