{"id":4384,"date":"2017-12-19T03:21:23","date_gmt":"2017-12-19T11:21:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.couchbase.com\/blog\/?p=4384"},"modified":"2023-08-11T11:21:28","modified_gmt":"2023-08-11T18:21:28","slug":"couchbase-server-x-dynamodb-quick-comparison","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.couchbase.com\/blog\/couchbase-server-x-dynamodb-quick-comparison\/","title":{"rendered":"Couchbase vs. DynamoDB – A Quick Comparison"},"content":{"rendered":"

Choosing a NoSQL database is way more complicated than selecting an RDBMS, the world of NoSQL database comes in multiple flavors, each one has a specific design focused on solving a different set of problems.<\/span><\/p>\n

A common comparison and recently also one of the most popular is Couchbase and DynamoDB, that is why I would like to compile here a comparison based on my experience with both, the documentation available and some opinions on StackOverflow and other sites.<\/span><\/p>\n

Let\u2019s get ready to rumble!<\/span><\/p>\n

A comparison of apples and oranges<\/b><\/h3>\n

First of all, we are almost comparing apples with oranges here, DynamoDB is a highly scalable key-value store which is eventually-consistent by default. Couchbase, on the other hand, is a consistent, fast and highly scalable key-value store, document database and managed cache.<\/span><\/p>\n

Of course, the difference between a key-value store and document databases is hard to define at first, as most of the key-value stores also support a data structure like JSON and the document databases naturally can be used as a key-value store. The differences between them will only emerge after you start comparing feature by feature.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A quick table comparison<\/b><\/h3>\n

We are going deeper on each topic in future posts, but for now let\u2019s see how a simple and quick table comparing DynamoDB and Couchbase Server looks like:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Feature<\/b><\/td>\nDynamoDB<\/b><\/td>\nCouchbase Server<\/b><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Licensing<\/span><\/td>\nProprietary<\/span><\/td>\nOpen-Source Community and Enterprise editions<\/span><\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Type<\/span><\/td>\n\n
    \n
  • Key-Value Store<\/span><\/li>\n
  • Limited Document Database<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/td>\n
\n
Model<\/span><\/td>\n\n
    \n
  • Limited data types<\/span><\/li>\n
  • 400kb max document size<\/span><\/li>\n
  • Key-value with JSON-Support<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/td>\n
\n
Search<\/span><\/td>\n\n
    \n
  • Elastic Search<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/td>\n
\n
Indexing<\/span><\/td>\n\n
    \n
  • Max of 5 Global and Local secondary indexes per table<\/span><\/li>\n
  • Hash or hash-range indexes only<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/td>\n
\n
Data Integrity<\/span><\/td>\n\n
    \n
  • Eventually Consistent by default<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
      \n
    • Can be configured to be strongly consistent<\/span><\/li>\n
    • Eventually Consistent between Regions<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/td>\n
\n
Scalability<\/span><\/td>\nHighly Scalable<\/span><\/td>\nHighly Scalable<\/span><\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Deployment<\/span><\/td>\nAWS only, fully managed<\/span><\/td>\n\n
Locking<\/span><\/td>\nOptimistic locking<\/span><\/td>\n\n
Backup & Restore<\/span><\/td>\n\n
    \n
  • Limited standard backup service<\/span><\/li>\n
  • On-Demand backup is only available in a few regions.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/td>\n
\n
Querying<\/span><\/td>\nLimited key-value and range queries<\/span><\/td>\n\n
Data Center Replication<\/span><\/td>\n\n
    \n
  • Bidirectional<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/td>\n
\n
Throttling<\/span><\/td>\n\n
    \n
  • Dynamo Accelerator (DAX) for eventually-consistent reads only.<\/span><\/li>\n
  • Can be tuned by Increasing RCU & WCU<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/td>\n
\n
Administration Interface<\/span><\/td>\n\n
    \n
  • Feature limited cloud administration interface <\/span><\/li>\n
  • No GUI in the local installation<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/td>\n
\n
Sharding<\/span><\/td>\nSharding is automatically done under the covers<\/span><\/td>\nSharding is automatically done under the covers<\/span><\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Security<\/span><\/td>\nProvided by normal AWS security measures<\/span><\/td>\n\n
Architecture<\/span><\/td>\nUnknown<\/span><\/td>\n\n
Integrations<\/span><\/td>\n\n
    \n
  • Spark, Hadoop<\/span><\/li>\n
  • Others not supported by AWS<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/td>\n
\n