DBMS > 4D vs. Apache Druid vs. ArangoDB vs. Cassandra vs. Google Cloud Spanner

System Properties Comparison 4D vs. Apache Druid vs. ArangoDB vs. Cassandra vs. Google Cloud Spanner

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Application development environment with integrated database management system

Open-source analytics data store designed for sub-second OLAP queries on high dimensionality and high cardinality data

Native multi-model DBMS for graph, document, key/value and search. All in one engine and accessible with one query language.

Wide-column store based on ideas of BigTable and DynamoDB

Optimized for write access

A horizontally scalable, globally consistent, relational database service. It is the externalization of the core Google database that runs the biggest aspects of Google, like Ads and Google Play.

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Relational DBMS
Time Series DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store
Search engine

Wide column store

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

DB-Engines Ranking measures the popularity of database management systems
Trend Chart

Score	2.58
Rank	#108	Overall
	#54	Relational DBMS

Score	3.34
Rank	#88	Overall
	#48	Relational DBMS
	#7	Time Series DBMS

Score	3.32
Rank	#90	Overall
	#15	Document stores
	#5	Graph DBMS
	#12	Key-value stores
	#10	Search engines

Score	101.89
Rank	#12	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	2.89
Rank	#103	Overall
	#52	Relational DBMS

Website

cloud.google.com/spanner

Technical documentation

developer.4d.com

druid.apache.org/docs/latest/design

docs.arangodb.com

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

cloud.google.com/spanner/docs

Social network pages

Developer

4D, Inc

Apache Software Foundation and contributors

ArangoDB Inc.

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Google

Initial release

1984

2012

2008

2017

Current release

v20, April 2023

29.0.1, April 2024

3.11.5, November 2023

4.1.3, July 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Apache license v2

Open Source

Apache Version 2; Commercial license (Enterprise) available

Open Source

Apache version 2

commercial

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

Providers of DBaaS offerings, please contact us to be listed.

ArangoDB Cloud –The Managed Cloud Service of ArangoDB. Provides fully managed, and monitored cluster deployments of any size, with enterprise-grade security. Get started for free and continue for as little as $0,21/hour.

Astra DB: Multi-cloud DBaaS built on Apache Cassandra.

Implementation language

Java

C++

Java

Server operating systems

OS X
Windows

Linux
OS X
Unix

Linux
OS X
Windows

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

hosted

Data scheme

yes

schema-less columns are supported

schema-free

automatically recognizes schema within a collection

schema-free

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

string, double, boolean, list, hash

yes

XML support

Some form of processing data in XML format, e.g. support for XML data structures, and/or support for XPath, XQuery or XSLT.

yes

Secondary indexes

yes

restricted

only equality queries, not always the best performing solution

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

close to SQL 92

SQL for querying

SQL-like SELECT, DML and DDL statements (CQL)

yes

Query statements complying to ANSI 2011

APIs and other access methods

ODBC
RESTful HTTP API

by using 4D Mobile
SOAP webservices

JDBC
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

AQL
Foxx Framework
Graph API (Gremlin)
GraphQL query language
HTTP API
Java & SpringData
JSON style queries
VelocyPack/VelocyStream

Proprietary protocol

CQL (Cassandra Query Language, an SQL-like language)
Thrift

gRPC (using protocol buffers) API
JDBC

At present, JDBC supports read-only queries. No support for DDL or DML statements.
RESTful HTTP API

Supported programming languages

4D proprietary IDE
PHP

Clojure
JavaScript
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Scala

C#
C++
Clojure
Elixir
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
R
Rust

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

JavaScript

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Sharding

manual/auto, time-based

Sharding

since version 2.0

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication

yes, via HDFS, S3 or other storage engines

Source-replica replication with configurable replication factor

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

Multi-source replication with 3 replicas for regional instances.

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

can be done with stored procedures in JavaScript

yes

using Google Cloud Dataflow

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency

configurable per collection or per write
Immediate Consistency
OneShard (highly available, fault-tolerant deployment mode with ACID semantics)

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

can be individually decided for each write operation

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

relationships in graphs

yes

by using interleaved tables, this features focuses more on performance improvements than on referential integrity

Transaction concepts

Support to ensure data integrity after non-atomic manipulations of data

ACID

Atomicity and isolation are supported for single operations

ACID

Strict serializable isolation

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

In-memory capabilities

Is there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.

User concepts

Access control

Users and groups

RBAC using LDAP or Druid internals for users and groups for read/write by datasource and system

yes

Access rights for users can be defined per object

Access rights for users, groups and roles based on Google Cloud Identity and Access Management (IAM)

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Graph and Beyond. With more than 11,000 stargazers on GitHub, ArangoDB is the leading...
» more

Apache Cassandra is the leading NoSQL, distributed database management system, well...
» more

Competitive advantages

Consolidation: As a native multi-model database, can be used as a full blown document...
» more

No single point of failure ensures 100% availability . Operational simplicity for...
» more

Typical application scenarios

Native multi-model in ArangoDB is being used for a broad range of projects across...
» more

Internet of Things (IOT), fraud detection applications, recommendation engines, product...
» more

Key customers

Cisco, Barclays, Refinitive, Siemens Mentor, Kabbage, Liaison, Douglas, MakeMyTrip,...
» more

Apple, Netflix, Uber, ING,, Intuit,Fidelity, NY Times, Outbrain, BazaarVoice, Best...
» more

Market metrics

ArangoDB is the leading native multi-model database with over 11,000 stargazers on...
» more

Cassandra is used by 40% of the Fortune 100.
» more

Licensing and pricing models

Very permissive Apache 2 License for Community Edition & commercial licenses are...
» more

Apache licenseÂ Pricing for commercial distributions provided by DataStax and available...
» more

We invite representatives of system vendors to contact us for updating and extending the system information,
and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.