Database as a Service (DBaaS), a form of Platform
as a Service (PaaS), is currently found in the public
marketplace in three broad capabilities—online
general relational databases, non-relational databases,
and the ability to operate virtual machine
images loaded with common open source databases
such as MySQL or similar commercial databases.
These three approaches provide Government IT
leadership with a wide range of capabilities and
potential complexities.
The analysis is intended for the chief information
officer (CIO) and project-level decision makers in
Government that are considering employing DBaaS
products, but would like greater visibility into product
benefits, risks, appropriate usage, and tradeoffs.
In this paper we evaluate four public DBaaS
offerings, contrasting their features and capabilities.
Two of the services, Amazon Relational
Database Service (RDS) and Microsoft SQL Azure,
offer structured query language (SQL)-compliant
database products. The remaining two services,
Google Datastore and Amazon SimpleDB, provide
NoSQL interfaces, and offer proprietary interfaces
for storing data in less complex structures.
