DBMS > AlaSQL vs. Cassandra vs. OpenSearch vs. Rockset vs. Stardog

System Properties Comparison AlaSQL vs. Cassandra vs. OpenSearch vs. Rockset vs. Stardog

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

A distributed, RESTful search and analytics engine forked from Elasticsearch and based on Apache Lucene

A scalable, reliable search and analytics service in the cloud, built on RocksDB

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

Primary database model

Document store
Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

Vector DBMS

Relational DBMS
Search engine

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	16.36
Rank	#37	Overall
	#4	Search engines

Score	0.79
Rank	#211	Overall
	#35	Document stores

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

Website

alasql.org

cassandra.apache.org

github.com/opensearch-project
opensearch.org

rockset.com

www.stardog.com

Technical documentation

github.com/AlaSQL/alasql

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

opensearch.org/docs/latest

docs.rockset.com

docs.stardog.com

Developer

Andrey Gershun & Mathias R. Wulff

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Amazon Web Services

Rockset

Stardog-Union

Initial release

2014

2008

2021

2019

2010

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

2.5.0, January 2023

7.3.0, May 2020

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

MIT-License

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

Apache Version 2.0

commercial

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

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 OpenSearch: Fully managed open source search and analytics suite. Out-of-the-box integrations get you up and running in a couple of clicks.
STACKIT OpenSearch offers OpenSearch in a managed version in enterprise grade, 100% GDPR-compliant, for a wide range of applications like analytics, website search, offering scalability and fast data access.

Implementation language

JavaScript

Java

C++

Java

Server operating systems

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

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

All OS with a Java VM

hosted

Linux
macOS
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

Flexible type definitions. Once a type is defined, it is persistent

schema-free

schema-free and OWL/RDFS-schema support

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

dynamic 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.

ingestion from XML files supported

Import/export of XML data possible

Secondary indexes

restricted

only equality queries, not always the best performing solution

yes

All search fields are automatically indexed

all fields are automatically indexed

yes

supports real-time indexing in full-text and geospatial

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-like query language

Read-only SQL queries, including JOINs

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

APIs and other access methods

JavaScript API

Proprietary protocol

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

Java API
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

HTTP REST

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

Supported programming languages

JavaScript

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby

Elasticsearch client

Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

.Net
Clojure
Groovy
Java
JavaScript
Python
Ruby

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

user defined functions and aggregates, HTTP Server extensions in Java

Triggers

yes

by using the 'percolation' feature

yes

via event handlers

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

Sharding

Automatic 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

Multi-source replication in HA-Cluster

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

Synchronous doc based replication. Get by ID may show delays up to 1 sec. Configurable write consistency: one, quorum, all

Eventual Consistency

Immediate Consistency in HA-Cluster

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

relationships in graphs

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

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users can be defined per object

Access rights for users and organizations can be defined via Rockset console

Access rights for users and 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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OpenSearch is a highly scalable and extensible open-source software suite for search,...
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Competitive advantages

No single point of failure ensures 100% availability . Operational simplicity for...
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Distributed as fully open source under Apache License, Version 2.0 (ALv2), OpenSearch...
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Typical application scenarios

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

The OpenSearch platform is used across a broad range of search , analytics, and observability...
» more

Key customers

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

Market metrics

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

Licensing and pricing models

Apache licenseÂ Pricing for commercial distributions provided by DataStax and available...
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The OpenSearch Project offers open source software licensed under Apache License...
» more

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