Amazon DynamoDB vs IBM Cloud Databases (formerly Compose)

Amazon DynamoDB

If you start with Amazon DynamoDB, you are over optimizing for the future. In my opinion, use Amazon DynamoDB only when SQL can not handle the load of your application.

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Engineer in Engineering

Computer Software Company, 11-50 employees

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IBM Cloud Databases (formerly Compose)

IBM Compose is well suited when a technical founder or engineering team with basic experience with the datastores is able to quickly get set up and going with a datastore without worrying about setup or server operations.IBM Compose may not be well suited if there is already a team in place to handle datastore server setup or if there is an absolute minimum budget needed.

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C-Level Executive in Engineering

Computer Software Company, 1-10 employees

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Feature Rating Comparison

Amazon DynamoDB

7.9

IBM Cloud Databases (formerly Compose)

—

Performance

8.0

—

Availability

8.4

—

Concurrency

9.0

—

Security

8.7

—

Scalability

9.7

—

Data model flexibility

4.0

—

Deployment model flexibility

7.3

—

Amazon DynamoDB

—

IBM Cloud Databases (formerly Compose)

8.3

Automatic software patching

—

8.5

Database scalability

—

8.6

Automated backups

—

8.6

Database security provisions

—

8.2

Monitoring and metrics

—

6.8

Automatic host deployment

—

8.8

Pros

No need to worry about hosting and ease of scaling and operations
Distributed and flexible as Amazon DynamoDB does not have a fixed schema
Based on load, options to increase throughput

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Engineer in Information Technology

Entertainment Company, 11-50 employees

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The ease of setup was effortless. For anyone with development experience, a few simple questions such as name and login data will get you set up.
The web application to manage cluster settings, billing settings and even introspect the data was simple and most importantly worked all the time. This can not always be said for web interfaces of other products.

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Verified User

C-Level Executive in Engineering

Computer Software Company, 1-10 employees

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Cons

The document oriented features are just starting out, and we'd love to see them develop to match MongoDB features.
Running out of provisioned throughput results in error responses. Better options for automatic scaling.

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C-Level Executive in Engineering

Information Technology and Services Company, 11-50 employees

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Pricing - they obviously need to look out for MongoDB's Atlas, which is globally cheaper for the part I'm interested in: MongoDB hosting.
Updates - at the moment I'm seriously considering going to Atlas. Mongo 3.6 is a huge update and at the moment Compose is stuck on 3.4, while Atlas is up to 3.6.
Analytics - the analytics/performance tools for Compose are not very user-friendly. For a hosted, let's say novice-friendly offering like Compose, I think there should be far more context about how to interpret the information given and easier ways to alert in case of problems.

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Employee in Information Technology

Food & Beverages Company, 11-50 employees

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Likelihood to Renew

Amazon DynamoDB7.1

Based on 13 answers

We use it for current databases and the cost is low enough to not justify transferring to a new technology.

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Verified User

C-Level Executive in Engineering

Information Technology and Services Company, 11-50 employees

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IBM Cloud Databases (formerly Compose)9.0

Based on 2 answers

I am very fond of the features and reliability of the compose DaaS, however I could switch if I find same qualities for lower price.

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Executive in Research & Development

Automotive Company, 1-10 employees

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Usability

No score

No answers yet

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IBM Cloud Databases (formerly Compose)8.7

Based on 3 answers

It is great the only things I have stumbled upon is the non standard port 80 they use and sometimes expired SSL certificate.

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Executive in Research & Development

Automotive Company, 1-10 employees

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Support

No score

No answers yet

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IBM Cloud Databases (formerly Compose)7.0

Based on 4 answers

Very slow response times and the responses have often not been satisfactory.

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Professional in Information Technology

Information Technology and Services Company, 1-10 employees

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Alternatives Considered

DynamoDB is fully managed which is a great plus over MongoDB. The feature set is not as strong on MongoDB's for document databases, but it the managed aspect is highly compelling. Similarly for Cassandra, DynamoDB is managed. DynamoDB scales much better than CouchDB.

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C-Level Executive in Engineering

Information Technology and Services Company, 11-50 employees

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Mongo Atlas - at the moment it looks better. It has 3.6 (Compose stuck at 3.4). Lower pricing (it seems).AWS Dynamo DB etc - I decided rather quickly not to use this, mostly for lack of adequate documentation.

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Verified User

Employee in Information Technology

Food & Beverages Company, 11-50 employees

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Return on Investment

Saves man-hours on setting up the JDBC/ ODBC drivers
Setting up of triggers in SQL database is comparatively complex, however AWS DynamoDB is much easier to configure and use
Provides much heavy tools to view the metrics and graphs

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Employee in Engineering

Higher Education Company, 5001-10,000 employees

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