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DBMS > AlaSQL vs. Cassandra vs. Oracle vs. Snowflake vs. TimescaleDB

System Properties Comparison AlaSQL vs. Cassandra vs. Oracle vs. Snowflake vs. TimescaleDB

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines
NameAlaSQL  Xexclude from comparisonCassandra  Xexclude from comparisonOracle  Xexclude from comparisonSnowflake  Xexclude from comparisonTimescaleDB  Xexclude from comparison
DescriptionJavaScript DBMS libraryWide-column store based on ideas of BigTable and DynamoDB infoOptimized for write accessWidely used RDBMSCloud-based data warehousing service for structured and semi-structured dataA time series DBMS optimized for fast ingest and complex queries, based on PostgreSQL
Primary database modelDocument store
Relational DBMS
Wide column storeRelational DBMSRelational DBMSTime Series DBMS
Secondary database modelsVector DBMS infostarting with release V5Document store
Graph DBMS infowith Oracle Spatial and Graph
RDF store infowith Oracle Spatial and Graph
Spatial DBMS infowith Oracle Spatial and Graph
Vector DBMS infosince Oracle 23
Relational DBMS
DB-Engines Ranking infomeasures the popularity of database management systemsranking trend
Trend Chart
Score0.46
Rank#260  Overall
#40  Document stores
#121  Relational DBMS
Score101.89
Rank#12  Overall
#1  Wide column stores
Score1236.29
Rank#1  Overall
#1  Relational DBMS
Score121.33
Rank#9  Overall
#6  Relational DBMS
Score4.64
Rank#71  Overall
#4  Time Series DBMS
Websitealasql.orgcassandra.apache.orgwww.oracle.com/­databasewww.snowflake.comwww.timescale.com
Technical documentationgithub.com/­AlaSQL/­alasqlcassandra.apache.org/­doc/­latestdocs.oracle.com/­en/­databasedocs.snowflake.net/­manuals/­index.htmldocs.timescale.com
DeveloperAndrey Gershun & Mathias R. WulffApache Software Foundation infoApache top level project, originally developped by FacebookOracleSnowflake Computing Inc.Timescale
Initial release20142008198020142017
Current release4.1.3, July 202323c, September 20232.15.0, May 2024
License infoCommercial or Open SourceOpen Source infoMIT-LicenseOpen Source infoApache version 2commercial inforestricted free version is availablecommercialOpen Source infoApache 2.0
Cloud-based only infoOnly available as a cloud servicenononoyesno
DBaaS offerings (sponsored links) infoDatabase as a Service

Providers of DBaaS offerings, please contact us to be listed.
Astra DB: Multi-cloud DBaaS built on Apache Cassandra.
Implementation languageJavaScriptJavaC and C++C
Server operating systemsserver-less, requires a JavaScript environment (browser, Node.js)BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows
AIX
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows
z/OS
hostedLinux
OS X
Windows
Data schemeschema-freeschema-freeyes infoSchemaless in JSON and XML columnsyes infosupport of semi-structured data formats (JSON, XML, Avro)yes
Typing infopredefined data types such as float or datenoyesyesyesnumerics, strings, booleans, arrays, JSON blobs, geospatial dimensions, currencies, binary data, other complex data types
XML support infoSome form of processing data in XML format, e.g. support for XML data structures, and/or support for XPath, XQuery or XSLT.nonoyesyesyes
Secondary indexesnorestricted infoonly equality queries, not always the best performing solutionyesyes
SQL infoSupport of SQLClose to SQL99, but no user access control, stored procedures and host language bindings.SQL-like SELECT, DML and DDL statements (CQL)yes infowith proprietary extensionsyesyes infofull PostgreSQL SQL syntax
APIs and other access methodsJavaScript APIProprietary protocol infoCQL (Cassandra Query Language, an SQL-like language)
Thrift
JDBC
ODBC
ODP.NET
Oracle Call Interface (OCI)
CLI Client
JDBC
ODBC
ADO.NET
JDBC
native C library
ODBC
streaming API for large objects
Supported programming languagesJavaScriptC#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript infoNode.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala
C
C#
C++
Clojure
Cobol
Delphi
Eiffel
Erlang
Fortran
Groovy
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Lisp
Objective C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Scala
Tcl
Visual Basic
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python
.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java infoJDBC
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl
Server-side scripts infoStored proceduresnonoPL/SQL infoalso stored procedures in Java possibleuser defined functionsuser defined functions, PL/pgSQL, PL/Tcl, PL/Perl, PL/Python, PL/Java, PL/PHP, PL/R, PL/Ruby, PL/Scheme, PL/Unix shell
Triggersyesyesyesno infosimilar concept for controling cloud resourcesyes
Partitioning methods infoMethods for storing different data on different nodesnoneSharding infono "single point of failure"Sharding, horizontal partitioningyesyes, across time and space (hash partitioning) attributes
Replication methods infoMethods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodesnoneselectable replication factor infoRepresentation of geographical distribution of servers is possibleMulti-source replication
Source-replica replication
yesSource-replica replication with hot standby and reads on replicas info
MapReduce infoOffers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methodsnoyesno infocan be realized in PL/SQLnono
Consistency concepts infoMethods to ensure consistency in a distributed systemnoneEventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency infocan be individually decided for each write operation
Immediate ConsistencyImmediate ConsistencyImmediate Consistency
Foreign keys infoReferential integrityyesnoyesyesyes
Transaction concepts infoSupport to ensure data integrity after non-atomic manipulations of datayes infoonly for local storage and DOM-storageno infoAtomicity and isolation are supported for single operationsACID infoisolation level can be parameterizedACIDACID
Concurrency infoSupport for concurrent manipulation of datayesyesyesyes
Durability infoSupport for making data persistentyes infoby using IndexedDB, SQL.JS or proprietary FileStorageyesyesyesyes
In-memory capabilities infoIs there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.yesnoyes infoVersion 12c introduced the new option 'Oracle Database In-Memory'nono
User concepts infoAccess controlnoAccess rights for users can be defined per objectfine grained access rights according to SQL-standardUsers with fine-grained authorization concept, user roles and pluggable authenticationfine grained access rights according to SQL-standard
More information provided by the system vendor
AlaSQLCassandraOracleSnowflakeTimescaleDB
Specific characteristicsApache Cassandra is the leading NoSQL, distributed database management system, well...
» more
Competitive advantagesNo single point of failure ensures 100% availability . Operational simplicity for...
» more
Typical application scenariosInternet of Things (IOT), fraud detection applications, recommendation engines, product...
» more
Key customersApple, Netflix, Uber, ING,, Intuit,Fidelity, NY Times, Outbrain, BazaarVoice, Best...
» more
Market metricsCassandra is used by 40% of the Fortune 100.
» more
Licensing and pricing modelsApache license  Pricing for commercial distributions provided by DataStax and available...
» more

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AlaSQLCassandraOracleSnowflakeTimescaleDB
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