Amazon DynamoDB vs. Microsoft SQL Server

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Amazon DynamoDB
Score 8.8 out of 10
N/A
Amazon DynamoDB is a cloud-native, NoSQL, serverless database service.
$0
capacity unit per hour
Microsoft SQL Server
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft SQL Server is a relational database.
$1,418
Per License
Pricing
Amazon DynamoDBMicrosoft SQL Server
Editions & Modules
Provisioned - Read Operation
$0.00013
capacity unit per hour
Provisioned - Write Operation
$0.00065
capacity unit per hour
Provisioned - Global Tables
$0.000975
per Read Capacity
On-Demand Streams
$0.02
per 100,000 read operations
Provisioned - Streams
$0.02
per 100,000 read operations
On-Demand Data Requests Outside AWS Regions
$0.09
per GB
Provisioned - Data Requests Outside AWS Regions
$0.09
per GB
On-Demand Snapshot
$0.10
per GB per month
Provisioned - Snapshot
$0.10
per GB per month
On-Demand Restoring a Backup
$0.15
per GB
Provisioned - Restoring a Backup
$0.15
per GB
On-Demand Point-in-Time Recovery
$0.20
per GB per month
Provisioned - Point-in-Time Recovery
$0.20
per GB per month
On-Demand Read Operation
$0.25
per million requests
On-Demand Data Stored
$0.25
per GB per month
Provisioned - Data Stored
$0.25
per GB per month
On-Demand - Write Operation
$1.25
per million requests
On-Demand Global Tables
$1.875
per million write operations replicated
Subscription
$1,418.00
Per License
Enterprise
$13,748.00
Per License
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Amazon DynamoDBMicrosoft SQL Server
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Amazon DynamoDBMicrosoft SQL Server
Considered Both Products
Amazon DynamoDB
Chose Amazon DynamoDB
Other all SQL Databases are based on the traditional Schema Structure and Amazon DynamoDB is NoSQL so you don't need to generate the SQL Schemas. You can store the data whatever you want, whenever you want. You can store data in structured or non-structured any way you want. If …
Chose Amazon DynamoDB
MongoDB was basically the first approach we used but because there was concern that some data may miss we were reluctant to use it. Oracle Database and SQL Server was our second approach but it was throttling so in last we tested out Amazon DynamoDB and it met our requirement.
Chose Amazon DynamoDB
DynamoDB is a great supplemental data store compared to SQL Server. We use SQL Server extensively for our primary application, however, it is sometimes overkill for small projects that just need a datastore. DynamoDB fits that bill better and is a great option for projects …
Chose Amazon DynamoDB
I didn't select it over MongoDB or Azure DocumentDB. In fact, we use all three. We let the developers make the choice.
Chose Amazon DynamoDB
Compared to running your own on-prem SQL infrastructure Amazon Dynamo is easier to set up, faster and more reliable as well as being cheaper in the long run.
Chose Amazon DynamoDB
We did not use or evaluated any. DynamoDB was our first choice for this particular use case and we were glad we made this choice.
Also, knowing the AWS infrastructure and having DynamoDB integrated into the AWS environment helped us greatly with learning DynamoDB and being able …
Microsoft SQL Server
Chose Microsoft SQL Server
SQL Server is better for large databases containing structured relational data. It makes it easy to group and order, to sum and create tables of data from any data stored in a table or related tables. While Dynamodb is very good at STORING huge amounts of unstructured data, it …
Chose Microsoft SQL Server
I think, MS SQL Server stacks up against them by improving its performance for relational database. Next thing will be to make a bit cheaper. Another think MS should look into non relational database option in top of relational.
I selected MS SQL server in one of the project …
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Amazon DynamoDBMicrosoft SQL Server
NoSQL Databases
Comparison of NoSQL Databases features of Product A and Product B
Amazon DynamoDB
9.2
70 Ratings
5% above category average
Microsoft SQL Server
-
Ratings
Performance9.269 Ratings00 Ratings
Availability9.470 Ratings00 Ratings
Concurrency8.868 Ratings00 Ratings
Security9.070 Ratings00 Ratings
Scalability9.469 Ratings00 Ratings
Data model flexibility8.667 Ratings00 Ratings
Deployment model flexibility10.023 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Amazon DynamoDBMicrosoft SQL Server
Small Businesses
IBM Cloudant
IBM Cloudant
Score 8.4 out of 10
SingleStore
SingleStore
Score 9.8 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
IBM Cloudant
IBM Cloudant
Score 8.4 out of 10
SingleStore
SingleStore
Score 9.8 out of 10
Enterprises
IBM Cloudant
IBM Cloudant
Score 8.4 out of 10
SingleStore
SingleStore
Score 9.8 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Amazon DynamoDBMicrosoft SQL Server
Likelihood to Recommend
8.9
(80 ratings)
9.6
(96 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(34 ratings)
9.0
(6 ratings)
Usability
8.4
(4 ratings)
9.9
(10 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Performance
9.1
(44 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
6.3
(4 ratings)
7.9
(25 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(5 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Product Scalability
9.1
(44 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Amazon DynamoDBMicrosoft SQL Server
Likelihood to Recommend
Amazon AWS
It’s great for server less and real-time applications. It would be great for gaming and mobile apps. However, if you need relational database and have fixed budget, do not use it. While budget can be managed, you need to be careful. Also this is not a tool for storing big data, there are other wide-column database types you could use for it ins the ad
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Microsoft
Microsoft SQL Server is a great RDBMS and meets all of our requirements. If you need a stable DB platform to support your line of a business application you'll be well served. Licensing costs are far cheaper, more portable and a lot more user friendly than Oracle. Product support and security patches from Microsoft are strong.
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Pros
Amazon AWS
  • To manage varying workloads, it enables users to increase capacity as necessary and decrease it as needed.
  • Users can take advantage of its auto-scaling, in-memory caching, and backup without paying for the services of a database administrator.
  • We can use it for low scale operations.
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Microsoft
  • Easy to configure and use with Visual Studio and Dot Net
  • Easy integration with MSBI to perform data analysis
  • Data Security
  • Easy to understand and use
  • Very easy to export database and tables in the form of SQL query or a script
Read full review
Cons
Amazon AWS
  • Cost model may not be easy to control and may lead to higher costs if not carefully planned
  • Indexing may be a cost culprit when not planned, because it's not included on the data costs
  • The Query Language may not fulfill everybody's expectations, as it has less features than those of competitors.
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Microsoft
  • The import/export process can be tricky to follow with lots of steps and could be better for importing flat files
  • Obtaining help from Microsoft is cumbersome and often other internet sources are better and quicker
  • The documentation is not great and again it's generally better to obtain help elsewhere if needed
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Likelihood to Renew
Amazon AWS
It's core to our business, we couldn't survive without it. We use it to drive everything from FTP logins to processing stories and delivering them to clients. It's reliable and easy to query from all of our pipeline services. Integration with things like AWS Lambda makes it easy to trigger events and run code whenever something changes in the database.
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Microsoft
We understand that the Microsoft SQL Server will continue to advance, offering the same robust and reliable platform while adding new features that enable us, as a software center, to create a superior product. That provides excellent performance while reducing the hardware requirements and the total cost of ownership of our solution.
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Usability
Amazon AWS
Functionally, DynamoDB has the features needed to use it. The interface is not as easy to use, which impacts its usability. Being familiar with AWS in general is helpful in understanding the interface, however it would be better if the interface more closely aligned with traditional tools for managing datastores.
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Microsoft
SQL Server mostly 'just works' or generates error messages to help you sort out the trouble. You can usually count on the product to get the job done and keep an eye on your potential mistakes. Interaction with other Microsoft products makes operating as a Windows user pretty straight forward. Digging through the multitude of dialogs and wizards can be a pain, but the answer is usually there somewhere.
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Reliability and Availability
Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
Its does not have outages.
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Performance
Amazon AWS
It works very well across all the regions and response time is also very quick due to AWS's internal data transfer. Plus if your product requires HIPPA or some other regulations needs to be followed, you can easily replicate the DB into multiple regions and they manage all by it's own.
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Microsoft
SSAS data cubes may some time slow down your Excel reports.
Read full review
Support Rating
Amazon AWS
I have not had to contact support for this service, however I have had to contact AWS for other services and their support has been good.
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Microsoft
We managed to handle most of our problems by looking into Microsoft's official documentation that has everything explained and almost every function has an example that illustrates in detail how a particular functionality works. Just like PowerShell has the ability to show you an example of how some cmdlet works, that is the case also here, and in my opinion, it is a very good practice and I like it.
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In-Person Training
Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
It was good
Read full review
Online Training
Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
very hands on and detailed training
Read full review
Implementation Rating
Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
Other than SQL taking quite a bit of time to actually install there are no problems with installation. Even on hardware that has good performance SQL can still take close to an hour to install a typical server with management and reporting services.
Read full review
Alternatives Considered
Amazon AWS
The only thing that can be compared to DynamoDB from the selected services can be Aurora. It is just that we use Aurora for High-Performance requirements as it can be 6 times faster than normal RDS DB. Both of them have served as well in the required scenario and we are very happy with most of the AWS services.
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Microsoft
[Microsoft] SQL Server has a much better community and professional support and is overall just a more reliable system with Microsoft behind it. I've used MySQL in the past and SQL Server has just become more comfortable for me and is my go to RDBMS.
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Scalability
Amazon AWS
I have taken one point away due to its size limits. In case the application requires queries, it becomes really complicated to read and write data. When it comes to extremely large data sets such as the case in my company, a third-party logistics company, where huge amount of data is generated on a daily basis, even though the scalability is good, it becomes difficult to manage all the data due to limits.
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Microsoft
SQL server does handle growing demands of a mid sized company.
Read full review
Return on Investment
Amazon AWS
  • Some developers see DynamoDB and try to fit problems to it, instead of picking the best solution for a given problem. This is true of any newer tool that people are trying to adopt.
  • It has allowed us to add more scalability to some of our systems.
  • As with any new technology there was a ramp up/rework phase as we learned best practices.
Read full review
Microsoft
  • Increased accuracy - We went from multiple users having different versions of an Excel spreadsheet to a single source of truth for our reporting.
  • Increased Efficiency - We can now generate reports at any time from a single source rather than multiple users spending their time collating data and generating reports.
  • Improved Security - Enterprise level security on a dedicated server rather than financial files on multiple laptop hard drives.
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ScreenShots

Amazon DynamoDB Screenshots

Screenshot of Amazon DynamoDB in the AWS Console