DBMS > Amazon Redshift vs. Cassandra vs. Couchbase vs. Datastax Enterprise vs. Google Cloud Spanner

System Properties Comparison Amazon Redshift vs. Cassandra vs. Couchbase vs. Datastax Enterprise vs. Google Cloud Spanner

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Large scale data warehouse service for use with business intelligence tools

Wide-column store based on ideas of BigTable and DynamoDB

Optimized for write access

A distributed document store with integrated cache, a powerful search engine, in-built operational and analytical capabilities, and an embedded mobile database

DataStax Enterprise (DSE) is the always-on, scalable data platform built on Apache Cassandra and designed for hybrid Cloud. DSE integrates graph, search, analytics, administration, developer tooling, and monitoring into a unified platform.

A horizontally scalable, globally consistent, relational database service. It is the externalization of the core Google database that runs the biggest aspects of Google, like Ads and Google Play.

Primary database model

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

Key-value store

originating from the former Membase product and supporting the Memcached protocol
Spatial DBMS

using the Geocouch extension
Search engine
Time Series DBMS
Vector DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS
Search engine
Vector DBMS

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

Score	16.88
Rank	#35	Overall
	#22	Relational DBMS

Score	98.83
Rank	#12	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	16.59
Rank	#36	Overall
	#5	Document stores

Score	5.93
Rank	#56	Overall
	#4	Wide column stores

Score	2.84
Rank	#100	Overall
	#51	Relational DBMS

Website

aws.amazon.com/redshift

cassandra.apache.org

www.couchbase.com

www.datastax.com/products/datastax-enterprise

cloud.google.com/spanner

Technical documentation

docs.aws.amazon.com/redshift

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

docs.couchbase.com

docs.datastax.com

cloud.google.com/spanner/docs

Developer

Amazon (based on PostgreSQL)

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Couchbase, Inc.

DataStax

Google

Initial release

2012

2008

2011

2017

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

Server: 7.2, June 2023; Mobile: 3.1, March 2022; Couchbase Capella (DBaaS), June 2023

6.8, April 2020

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

Business Source License (BSL 1.1); Commercial licenses also available

commercial

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.

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Implementation language

Java

C, C++, Go and Erlang

Java

Server operating systems

hosted

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
OS X

hosted

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

yes

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.

Secondary indexes

restricted

only equality queries, not always the best performing solution

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

does not fully support an SQL-standard

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

SQL++, extends ANSI SQL to JSON for operational, transactional, and analytic use cases

SQL-like DML and DDL statements (CQL); Spark SQL

yes

Query statements complying to ANSI 2011

APIs and other access methods

JDBC
ODBC

Proprietary protocol

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

CLI Client
HTTP REST
Kafka Connector
Native language bindings for CRUD, Query, Search and Analytics APIs
Spark Connector
Spring Data

Proprietary protocol

CQL (Cassandra Query Language)
TinkerPop Gremlin

with DSE Graph

gRPC (using protocol buffers) API
JDBC

At present, JDBC supports read-only queries. No support for DDL or DML statements.
RESTful HTTP API

Supported programming languages

All languages supporting JDBC/ODBC

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

.Net
C
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Kotlin
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

C
C#
C++
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby

Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

user defined functions

in Python

Functions and timers in JavaScript and UDFs in Java, Python, SQL++

Triggers

yes

via the TAP protocol

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

Automatic Sharding

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

Multi-source replication

including cross data center replication
Source-replica replication

configurable replication factor, datacenter aware, advanced replication for edge computing

Multi-source replication with 3 replicas for regional instances.

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

using Google Cloud Dataflow

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

can be individually decided for each write operation

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

selectable on a per-operation basis

Immediate Consistency
Tunable Consistency

consistency level can be individually decided with each write operation

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

informational only, not enforced by the system

yes

by using interleaved tables, this features focuses more on performance improvements than on referential integrity

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

Atomicity and isolation are supported for single operations

ACID

Atomicity and isolation are supported for single operations

ACID

Strict serializable isolation

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

In-memory capabilities

Is there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.

yes

Ephemeral buckets

yes

User concepts

Access control

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Access rights for users can be defined per object

User and Administrator separation with password-based and LDAP integrated Authentication. Role-base access control.

Access rights for users can be defined per object

Access rights for users, groups and roles based on Google Cloud Identity and Access Management (IAM)

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Apache Cassandra is the leading NoSQL, distributed database management system, well...
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DataStax Enterprise is scale-out data infrastructure for enterprises that need to...
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Competitive advantages

No single point of failure ensures 100% availability . Operational simplicity for...
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Supporting the following application requirements: Zero downtime - Built on Apache...
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Typical application scenarios

Internet of Things (IOT), fraud detection applications, recommendation engines, product...
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Applications that must be massively and linearly scalable with 100% uptime and able...
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Key customers

Apple, Netflix, Uber, ING,, Intuit,Fidelity, NY Times, Outbrain, BazaarVoice, Best...
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Capital One, Cisco, Comcast, eBay, McDonald's, Microsoft, Safeway, Sony, UBS, and...
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Market metrics

Cassandra is used by 40% of the Fortune 100.
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Among the Forbes 100 Most Innovative Companies, DataStax is trusted by 5 of the top...
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Licensing and pricing models

Apache licenseÂ Pricing for commercial distributions provided by DataStax and available...
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Annual subscription
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