DBMS > AlaSQL vs. Cassandra vs. FoundationDB vs. Google BigQuery vs. H2

System Properties Comparison AlaSQL vs. Cassandra vs. FoundationDB vs. Google BigQuery vs. H2

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Created as commercial project in 2013, FoundationDB has been acquired by Apple in March 2015 and was withdrawn from the market. As a consequence, the product was removed from the DB-Engines ranking. In April 2018, Apple open-sourced FoundationDB and it therefore reappears in the ranking.

Description

JavaScript DBMS library

Wide-column store based on ideas of BigTable and DynamoDB

Optimized for write access

Ordered key-value store. Core features are complimented by layers.

Large scale data warehouse service with append-only tables

Full-featured RDBMS with a small footprint, either embedded into a Java application or used as a database server.

Primary database model

Document store
Relational DBMS

Wide column store

Document store

supported via specific layer
Key-value store
Relational DBMS

supported via specific SQL-layer

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

Spatial 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	1.03
Rank	#190	Overall
	#31	Document stores
	#28	Key-value stores
	#89	Relational DBMS

Score	60.38
Rank	#19	Overall
	#13	Relational DBMS

Score	8.13
Rank	#49	Overall
	#31	Relational DBMS

Website

alasql.org

cassandra.apache.org

github.com/apple/foundationdb

cloud.google.com/bigquery

www.h2database.com

Technical documentation

github.com/AlaSQL/alasql

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

apple.github.io/foundationdb

cloud.google.com/bigquery/docs

www.h2database.com/html/main.html

Developer

Andrey Gershun & Mathias R. Wulff

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

FoundationDB

Google

Thomas Mueller

Initial release

2014

2008

2013

2010

2005

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

6.2.28, November 2020

2.2.220, July 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

MIT-License

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

Apache 2.0

commercial

Open Source

dual-licence (Mozilla public license, Eclipse public license)

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.

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

Implementation language

JavaScript

Java

C++

Java

Server operating systems

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

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
OS X
Windows

hosted

All OS with a Java VM

Data scheme

schema-free

some layers support schemas

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

some layers support typing

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.

Secondary indexes

restricted

only equality queries, not always the best performing solution

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)

supported in specific SQL layer only

yes

APIs and other access methods

JavaScript API

Proprietary protocol

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

RESTful HTTP/JSON API

JDBC
ODBC

Supported programming languages

JavaScript

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

.Net
C
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
PHP
Python
Ruby
Swift

.Net
Java
JavaScript
Objective-C
PHP
Python
Ruby

Java

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

in SQL-layer only

user defined functions

in JavaScript

Java Stored Procedures and User-Defined Functions

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

Sharding

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

none

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

yes

With clustering: 2 database servers on different computers operate on identical copies of a database

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

none

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

can be individually decided for each write operation

Linearizable consistency

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

in SQL-layer only

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

Since BigQuery is designed for querying data

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

yes, multi-version concurrency control (MVCC)

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

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users can be defined per object

Access privileges (owner, writer, reader) on dataset, table or view level

Google Cloud Identity & Access Management (IAM)

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Apache Cassandra is the leading NoSQL, distributed database management system, well...
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Competitive advantages

No single point of failure ensures 100% availability . Operational simplicity for...
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Typical application scenarios

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