Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Datomic VS KeyDB

Compare Datomic VS KeyDB and see what are their differences

Datomic logo Datomic

The fully transactional, cloud-ready, distributed database

KeyDB logo KeyDB

KeyDB is fast NoSQL database with full compatibility for Redis APIs, clients, and modules.
  • Datomic Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-14
  • KeyDB Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-06-19

Datomic features and specs

  • Immutability
    Datomic employs an append-only data model where data is never overwritten but instead appended, ensuring historical data is always available and providing strong consistency.
  • Time Travel Queries
    Datomic allows you to query the database as of any point in time, facilitating auditing and debugging by allowing easy access to historical data states.
  • Rich Data Model
    Supports complex data types like maps and sets directly within its schema, providing a flexible way to represent data.
  • ACID Transactions
    Datomic supports fully ACID-compliant transactions, ensuring reliable and predictable database operations.
  • Scalability
    Separates storage and compute, allowing for horizontal scaling of read operations, making it suitable for handling large datasets.
  • Query Flexibility
    Offers a powerful query language that supports recursive queries, making it suitable for complex data retrieval needs.

Possible disadvantages of Datomic

  • Complexity
    The architecture of Datomic can be complex to understand and implement, particularly for teams unfamiliar with its design principles.
  • Cost
    Can be expensive to operate, especially in a cloud environment, where costs increase with the amount of data stored and the compute resources required.
  • Limited Write Throughput
    Due to its append-only design, Datomic can have limited write throughput, which may not be suitable for applications with heavy write requirements.
  • Closed Source
    Datomic is a proprietary database system, which may not appeal to organizations that prefer open-source solutions.
  • Learning Curve
    Requires a learning curve as its conceptual model and query language are different from traditional databases, potentially requiring additional training.
  • Dependency on AWS
    Relying on AWS ecosystem for the storage backend can limit choices for deployment environments, impacting flexibility.

KeyDB features and specs

  • High Performance
    KeyDB offers superior performance over Redis by allowing multi-threading, which utilizes multiple CPU cores efficiently, leading to significant improvements in throughput and latency.
  • Redis Compatibility
    KeyDB is fully compatible with Redis, meaning users can easily switch between Redis and KeyDB without needing to change their existing code or data structures.
  • Active Replication
    It supports multi-primary (active-active) replication, enabling all replicas to accept writes without worrying about conflicts, which increases availability and resilience.
  • Built-in TLS
    KeyDB includes built-in TLS support which enhances security by allowing data encryption in transit, a feature that requires third-party solutions in some Redis setups.
  • Persistence Options
    KeyDB supports both RDB snapshotting and AOF logging, offering flexible persistence strategies to balance between performance and durability.

Possible disadvantages of KeyDB

  • Community Size
    KeyDB, while gaining popularity, has a smaller community compared to Redis, which can lead to less community support and fewer third-party tools or extensions.
  • Maturity
    As a relatively newer project compared to Redis, KeyDB may lack the same level of proven stability and maturity, making it a potentially riskier choice for critical applications.
  • Documentation and Resources
    While KeyDB has extensive documentation, it might not be as comprehensive or complete as Redis, potentially leading to longer project integration times.
  • Potential Compatibility Issues
    Although KeyDB is compatible with Redis, advanced Redis features or unusual configurations might face compatibility issues during migration.
  • Less Architectural Simplicity
    The added complexity of multi-threading and active-active replication modes can increase the operational overhead compared to Redis's simpler single-threaded, master-slave architecture.

Datomic videos

KotlinConf 2018 - Datomic: The Most Innovative DB You've Never Heard Of by August Lilleaas

More videos:

  • Review - "Real-World Datomic: An Experience Report" by Craig Andera (2013)
  • Review - Rich Hickey on Datomic Ions, September 12, 2018

KeyDB videos

KeyDB on FLASH (Redis Compatible)

More videos:

  • Demo - Simple Demo of KeyDB on Flash in under 7 minutes (Drop in Redis Alternative)

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Datomic and KeyDB)
Databases
55 55%
45% 45
NoSQL Databases
61 61%
39% 39
Key-Value Database
0 0%
100% 100
Network & Admin
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Datomic and KeyDB

Datomic Reviews

We have no reviews of Datomic yet.
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KeyDB Reviews

Redis vs. KeyDB vs. Dragonfly vs. Skytable | Hacker News
2. KeyDB: The second is KeyDB. IIRC, I saw it in a blog post which said that it is a "multithreaded fork of Redis that is 5X faster"[1]. I really liked the idea because I was previously running several instances of Redis on the same node and proxying them like a "single-node cluster." Why? To increase CPU utilization. A single KeyDB instance could replace the unwanted...
Comparing the new Redis6 multithreaded I/O to Elasticache & KeyDB
Because of KeyDBโ€™s multithreading and performance gains, we typically need a much larger benchmark machine than the one KeyDB is running on. We have found that a 32 core m5.8xlarge is needed to produce enough throughput with memtier. This supports throughput for up to a 16 core KeyDB instance (medium to 4xlarge)
Source: docs.keydb.dev
KeyDB: A Multithreaded Redis Fork | Hacker News
"KeyDB works by running the normal Redis event loop on multiple threads. Network IO, and query parsing are done concurrently. Each connection is assigned a thread on accept(). Access to the core hash table is guarded by spinlock. Because the hashtable access is extremely fast this lock has low contention. Transactions hold the lock for the duration of the EXEC command....

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, KeyDB seems to be more popular. It has been mentiond 10 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Datomic mentions (0)

We have not tracked any mentions of Datomic yet. Tracking of Datomic recommendations started around Mar 2021.

KeyDB mentions (10)

  • Redis
    These facts only hold when the size of your payload and the number of connections remain relatively small. This easily jumps out the window with ever-increasing load parameters. The threshold is, unfortunately, rather low at a high number of connections and increased payload sizes. Modern large-scale micro-services will easily have over 100 running instances at medium scale. And since most instances employ some... - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • Introducing LMS Moodle Operator
    The LMS Moodle Operator serves as a meta-operator, orchestrating the deployment and management of Moodle instances in Kubernetes. It handles the entire stack required to run Moodle, including components like Postgres, Keydb, NFS-Ganesha, and Moodle itself. Each of these components has its own Kubernetes Operator, ensuring seamless integration and management. - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
  • Dragonfly Is Production Ready (and we raised $21M)
    Congrats on the funding and getting production ready, it's good that KeyDB (and Redis) get some competition. https://docs.keydb.dev/ Open question, how does Dragonfly differ from KeyDB? - Source: Hacker News / over 3 years ago
  • I deleted 78% of my Redis container and it still works
    See: Distroless images[0] This is one of the huge benefits of recent systems languages like go and rust -- they compile to single binaries so you can use things like scatch[1] containers. You may have to fiddle with gnu libc/musl libc (usually when getaddrinfo is involved/dns etc), but once you're done with it, packaging is so easy. Even languages like Node (IMO the most progressive of the scripting languages)... - Source: Hacker News / about 4 years ago
  • Dragonflydb โ€“ A modern replacement for Redis and Memcached
    Interesting project. Very similar to KeyDB [1] which also developed a multi-threaded scale-up approach to Redis. It's since been acquired by Snapchat. There's also Aerospike [2] which has developed a lot around low-latency performance. 1. https://docs.keydb.dev/ 2. https://aerospike.com/. - Source: Hacker News / about 4 years ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing Datomic and KeyDB, you can also consider the following products

MySQL - The world's most popular open source database

Redis - Redis is an open source in-memory data structure project implementing a distributed, in-memory key-value database with optional durability.

MarkLogic Server - MarkLogic Server is a multi-model database that has both NoSQL and trusted enterprise data management capabilities.

MongoDB - MongoDB (from "humongous") is a scalable, high-performance NoSQL database.

Valentina Server - Valentina Server is 3 in 1: Valentina DB Server / SQLite Server / Report Server

Skytable - Skytable is a free and open-source realtime NoSQL database that aims to provide flexible data modelling at scale.