DBMS > Amazon CloudSearch vs. Cassandra vs. HarperDB vs. Heroic vs. Memcached

System Properties Comparison Amazon CloudSearch vs. Cassandra vs. HarperDB vs. Heroic vs. Memcached

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

A hosted search engine service by Amazon with the data stored in Amazons cloud

Wide-column store based on ideas of BigTable and DynamoDB

Optimized for write access

Ultra-low latency distributed database with an intuitive REST API supporting NoSQL and SQL (including joins). Deployment of functions and databases simultaneously with a consolidated node-level architecture.

Time Series DBMS built at Spotify based on Cassandra or Google Cloud Bigtable, and ElasticSearch

In-memory key-value store, originally intended for caching

Primary database model

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

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

Score	1.85
Rank	#137	Overall
	#12	Search engines

Score	101.89
Rank	#12	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	0.55
Rank	#248	Overall
	#38	Document stores

Score	0.51
Rank	#255	Overall
	#21	Time Series DBMS

Score	19.42
Rank	#32	Overall
	#4	Key-value stores

Website

aws.amazon.com/cloudsearch

cassandra.apache.org

www.harperdb.io

github.com/spotify/heroic

www.memcached.org

Technical documentation

docs.aws.amazon.com/cloudsearch

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

docs.harperdb.io/docs

spotify.github.io/heroic

github.com/memcached/memcached/wiki

Developer

Amazon

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

HarperDB

Spotify

Danga Interactive

originally developed by Brad Fitzpatrick for LiveJournal

Initial release

2012

2008

2017

2014

2003

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

3.1, August 2021

1.6.25, March 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Apache version 2

commercial

free community edition available

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

BSD 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

Java

Node.js

Java

Server operating systems

hosted

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
OS X

FreeBSD
Linux
OS X
Unix
Windows

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

dynamic schema

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

JSON data types

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

yes

all search fields are automatically indexed

restricted

only equality queries, not always the best performing solution

yes

via Elasticsearch

SQL

Support of SQL

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

SQL-like data manipulation statements

APIs and other access methods

HTTP API

Proprietary protocol

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

JDBC
ODBC
React Hooks
RESTful HTTP/JSON API
WebSocket

HQL (Heroic Query Language, a JSON-based language)
HTTP API

Proprietary protocol

Supported programming languages

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

.Net
C
C#
C++
ColdFusion
D
Dart
Delphi
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Lisp
MatLab
Objective C
Perl
PHP
PowerShell
Prolog
Python
R
Ruby
Rust
Scala
Swift

.Net
C
C++
ColdFusion
Erlang
Java
Lisp
Lua
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

Custom Functions

since release 3.1

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

yes

automatic partitioning across Amazon Search Instance as required

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

A table resides as a whole on one (or more) nodes in a cluster

Sharding

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

managed transparently by AWS

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

yes

the nodes on which a table resides can be defined

yes

none

Repcached, a Memcached patch, provides this functionallity

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

can be individually decided for each write operation

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

Transaction concepts

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

Atomicity and isolation are supported for single operations

Atomic execution of specific operations

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

yes, using LMDB

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

authentication via encrypted signatures

Access rights for users can be defined per object

Access rights for users and roles

yes

using SASL (Simple Authentication and Security Layer) protocol

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Apache Cassandra is the leading NoSQL, distributed database management system, well...
» more

Competitive advantages

No single point of failure ensures 100% availability . Operational simplicity for...
» more

Typical application scenarios

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

We invite representatives of system vendors to contact us for updating and extending the system information,
and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.