DBMS > AlaSQL vs. Cassandra vs. IBM Cloudant vs. MySQL vs. QuestDB

System Properties Comparison AlaSQL vs. Cassandra vs. IBM Cloudant vs. MySQL vs. QuestDB

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

JavaScript DBMS library

Wide-column store based on ideas of BigTable and DynamoDB

Optimized for write access

Database as a Service offering based on Apache CouchDB

Widely used open source RDBMS

A high performance open source SQL database for time series data

Primary database model

Document store
Relational DBMS

Wide column store

Document store

Relational DBMS

Key/Value like access via memcached API

Time Series DBMS

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

Document store
Spatial DBMS

Relational DBMS

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

Score	0.51
Rank	#256	Overall
	#40	Document stores
	#118	Relational DBMS

Score	98.83
Rank	#12	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	2.75
Rank	#104	Overall
	#19	Document stores

Score	1061.34
Rank	#2	Overall
	#2	Relational DBMS

Score	2.70
Rank	#105	Overall
	#8	Time Series DBMS

Website

alasql.org

cassandra.apache.org

www.ibm.com/products/cloudant

www.mysql.com

questdb.io

Technical documentation

github.com/AlaSQL/alasql

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

cloud.ibm.com/docs/Cloudant

dev.mysql.com/doc

questdb.io/docs

Developer

Andrey Gershun & Mathias R. Wulff

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

IBM, Apache Software Foundation

IBM acquired Cloudant in February 2014

Oracle

since 2010, originally MySQL AB, then Sun

QuestDB Technology Inc

Initial release

2014

2008

2010

1995

2014

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

8.4.0, April 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

MIT-License

Open Source

Apache version 2

commercial

Open Source

GPL version 2. Commercial licenses with extended functionallity are available

Open Source

Apache 2.0

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.

Aiven for MySQL: Fully managed MySQL, deployable in the cloud of your choice, with seamless integrations and lightning-fast setup.

Implementation language

JavaScript

Java

Erlang

C and C++

Java (Zero-GC), C++, Rust

Server operating systems

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

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

hosted

FreeBSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Linux
macOS
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free via InfluxDB Line Protocol

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.

yes

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)

yes

with proprietary extensions

SQL with time-series extensions

APIs and other access methods

JavaScript API

Proprietary protocol

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

RESTful HTTP/JSON API

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary native API

HTTP REST
InfluxDB Line Protocol (TCP/UDP)
JDBC
PostgreSQL wire protocol

Supported programming languages

JavaScript

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

C#
Java
JavaScript
Objective-C
PHP
Ruby

Ada
C
C#
C++
D
Delphi
Eiffel
Erlang
Haskell
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl

PostgreSQL driver
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python
Rust

over HTTP

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

View functions (Map-Reduce) in JavaScript

yes

proprietary syntax

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

Sharding

horizontal partitioning, sharding with MySQL Cluster or MySQL Fabric

horizontal partitioning (by timestamps)

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
Source-replica replication

Source-replica replication with eventual consistency

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

Eventual Consistency

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

not for MyISAM storage engine

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

atomic operations within a document possible

ACID

not for MyISAM storage engine

ACID for single-table writes

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Optimistic locking

yes

table locks or row locks depending on storage engine

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

through memory mapped files

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users can be defined per object

Access rights for users can be defined per database

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

no user groups or roles

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Apache Cassandra is the leading NoSQL, distributed database management system, well...
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Relational model with native time series support Column-based storage and time partitioned...
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Competitive advantages

No single point of failure ensures 100% availability . Operational simplicity for...
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High ingestion throughput: peak of 4M rows/sec (TSBS Benchmark) Code optimizations...
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Typical application scenarios

Internet of Things (IOT), fraud detection applications, recommendation engines, product...
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Financial tick data Industrial IoT Application Metrics Monitoring
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Key customers

Apple, Netflix, Uber, ING,, Intuit,Fidelity, NY Times, Outbrain, BazaarVoice, Best...
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Banks & Hedge funds, Yahoo, OKX, Airbus, Aquis Exchange, Net App, Cloudera, Airtel,...
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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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Open source Apache 2.0 QuestDB Enterprise QuestDB Cloud
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