Centralized vs. Decentralized: Performance Comparison between BigchainDB and Amazon QLDB

Decentralized databases have gained popularity in the last few years in different areas, such as: traceability, supply chains or finance. Leveraging this type of emerging technology will improve knowledge sharing, as well as the transparency and traceability of the data for digital systems. In a similar way, the characteristics are advertised by the centralized ledger technologies, which are manufactured by large cloud service providers such as Amazon. The present study analyzes the performance of two ledger technologies: BigchainDB (i.e., the decentralized blockchain database) and Amazon QLDB (i.e., the centralized ledger database with transparent and immutable characteristics). For the purposes of comparison, we have integrated these technologies into our traceability platform, which is called the Smart Tracking Platform (STP), and performed a series of experiments enabling us to acquire data for different metrics, such as CPU or memory usage for both the reading and writing operations. The findings of the present study show that QLDB has an overall better performance compared to BigchainDB, based on the metrics that have been considered. From the perspective of database ledger implementation, Amazon QLDB proved to be an integrated solution, easier to use, while BigchainDB comprises a more complex system to be implemented and developed, but is more flexible. Although both systems are almost ready to use solutions for local environments, when it comes to configuration and setting up the communication between nodes within a production environment, BigchainDB adds a layer of complexity from a DevOps perspective, while Amazon QLDB completely overcomes it. Depending on the area considered and the identified needs, both BigchainDB and Amazon QLDB can be considered as suitable solutions for a ledger database.