DBMS > AlaSQL vs. Cassandra vs. Couchbase vs. Stardog vs. Trafodion

System Properties Comparison AlaSQL vs. Cassandra vs. Couchbase vs. Stardog vs. Trafodion

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Apache Trafodion has been retired in 2021. Therefore it is excluded from the DB-Engines Ranking.

Description

JavaScript DBMS library

Wide-column store based on ideas of BigTable and DynamoDB

Optimized for write access

A distributed document store with integrated cache, a powerful search engine, in-built operational and analytical capabilities, and an embedded mobile database

Enterprise Knowledge Graph platform and graph DBMS with high availability, high performance reasoning, and virtualization

Transactional SQL-on-Hadoop DBMS

Primary database model

Document store
Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

Key-value store

originating from the former Membase product and supporting the Memcached protocol
Spatial DBMS

using the Geocouch extension
Search engine
Time Series DBMS
Vector DBMS

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

Score	0.46
Rank	#260	Overall
	#40	Document stores
	#121	Relational DBMS

Score	101.89
Rank	#12	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	17.30
Rank	#36	Overall
	#5	Document stores

Score	2.02
Rank	#123	Overall
	#11	Graph DBMS
	#6	RDF stores

Website

Technical documentation

github.com/AlaSQL/alasql

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

docs.couchbase.com

docs.stardog.com

trafodion.apache.org/documentation.html

Developer

Andrey Gershun & Mathias R. Wulff

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Couchbase, Inc.

Stardog-Union

Apache Software Foundation, originally developed by HP

Initial release

2014

2008

2011

2010

2014

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

Server: 7.2, June 2023; Mobile: 3.1, March 2022; Couchbase Capella (DBaaS), June 2023

7.3.0, May 2020

2.3.0, February 2019

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

MIT-License

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

Business Source License (BSL 1.1); Commercial licenses also available

commercial

60-day fully-featured trial license; 1-year fully-featured non-commercial use license for academics/students

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

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

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

Implementation language

JavaScript

Java

C, C++, Go and Erlang

Java

C++, Java

Server operating systems

server-less, requires a JavaScript environment (browser, Node.js)

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
macOS
Windows

Linux

Data scheme

schema-free

schema-free and OWL/RDFS-schema support

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

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.

Import/export of XML data possible

Secondary indexes

restricted

only equality queries, not always the best performing solution

yes

supports real-time indexing in full-text and geospatial

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

Close to SQL99, but no user access control, stored procedures and host language bindings.

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

SQL++, extends ANSI SQL to JSON for operational, transactional, and analytic use cases

Yes, compatible with all major SQL variants through dedicated BI/SQL Server

yes

APIs and other access methods

JavaScript API

Proprietary protocol

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

CLI Client
HTTP REST
Kafka Connector
Native language bindings for CRUD, Query, Search and Analytics APIs
Spark Connector
Spring Data

GraphQL query language
HTTP API
Jena RDF API
OWL
RDF4J API
Sesame REST HTTP Protocol
SNARL
SPARQL
Spring Data
Stardog Studio
TinkerPop 3

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC

Supported programming languages

JavaScript

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

.Net
C
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Kotlin
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

.Net
Clojure
Groovy
Java
JavaScript
Python
Ruby

All languages supporting JDBC/ODBC/ADO.Net

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

Functions and timers in JavaScript and UDFs in Java, Python, SQL++

user defined functions and aggregates, HTTP Server extensions in Java

Java Stored Procedures

Triggers

yes

via the TAP protocol

yes

via event handlers

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

Automatic Sharding

none

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

none

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

Multi-source replication

including cross data center replication
Source-replica replication

Multi-source replication in HA-Cluster

yes, via HBase

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

via user defined functions and HBase

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

none

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

can be individually decided for each write operation

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

selectable on a per-operation basis

Immediate Consistency in HA-Cluster

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

relationships in graphs

yes

Transaction concepts

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

yes

only for local storage and DOM-storage

Atomicity and isolation are supported for single operations

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

by using IndexedDB, SQL.JS or proprietary FileStorage

yes

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

Ephemeral buckets

yes

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users can be defined per object

User and Administrator separation with password-based and LDAP integrated Authentication. Role-base access control.

Access rights for users and roles

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

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Competitive advantages

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Typical application scenarios

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Key customers

Apple, Netflix, Uber, ING,, Intuit,Fidelity, NY Times, Outbrain, BazaarVoice, Best...
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Market metrics

Cassandra is used by 40% of the Fortune 100.
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Licensing and pricing models

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