DBMS > Amazon Redshift vs. Apache Cassandra vs. FoundationDB vs. Microsoft Azure Table Storage vs. MonetDB

System Properties Comparison Amazon Redshift vs. Apache Cassandra vs. FoundationDB vs. Microsoft Azure Table Storage vs. MonetDB

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Created as commercial project in 2013, FoundationDB has been acquired by Apple in March 2015 and was withdrawn from the market. As a consequence, the product was removed from the DB-Engines ranking. In April 2018, Apple open-sourced FoundationDB and it therefore reappears in the ranking.

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

Ordered key-value store. Core features are complimented by layers.

A Wide Column Store for rapid development using massive semi-structured datasets

A relational database management system that stores data in columns

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Wide column store

Document store

supported via specific layer
Key-value store
Relational DBMS

supported via specific SQL-layer

Wide column store

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

Document store
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	15.25
Rank	#38	Overall
	#23	Relational DBMS

Score	98.94
Rank	#11	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	0.97
Rank	#191	Overall
	#32	Document stores
	#28	Key-value stores
	#87	Relational DBMS

Score	3.55
Rank	#80	Overall
	#6	Wide column stores

Score	1.72
Rank	#135	Overall
	#62	Relational DBMS

Website

aws.amazon.com/redshift

cassandra.apache.org

github.com/apple/foundationdb

azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/storage/tables

www.monetdb.org

Technical documentation

docs.aws.amazon.com/redshift

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

apple.github.io/foundationdb

www.monetdb.org/Documentation

Developer

Amazon (based on PostgreSQL)

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

FoundationDB

Microsoft

MonetDB BV

Initial release

2012

2008

2013

2012

2004

Current release

5.0-rc1, July 2024

6.2.28, November 2020

Dec2023 (11.49), December 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

Apache 2.0

commercial

Open Source

Mozilla Public License 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.

Implementation language

Java

C++

Server operating systems

hosted

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
OS X
Windows

hosted

FreeBSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

some layers support schemas

schema-free

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

some layers support 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.

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)

supported in specific SQL layer only

yes

SQL 2003 with some extensions

APIs and other access methods

JDBC
ODBC

Proprietary protocol

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

RESTful HTTP API

JDBC
native C library

MAPI library (MonetDB application programming interface)
ODBC

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
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
PHP
Python
Ruby
Swift

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

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

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

user defined functions

in Python

in SQL-layer only

yes, in SQL, C, R

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

Sharding via remote tables

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

yes

implicit feature of the cloud service. Replication either local, cross-facility or geo-redundant.

none

Source-replica replication available in experimental status

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

can be individually decided for each write operation

Linearizable consistency

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

informational only, not enforced by the system

in SQL-layer only

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

Atomicity and isolation are supported for single operations

ACID

optimistic locking

ACID

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

User concepts

Access control

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Access rights for users can be defined per object

Access rights based on private key authentication or shared access signatures

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Apache Cassandra is the leading NoSQL, distributed database management system, well...
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Competitive advantages

No single point of failure ensures 100% availability . Operational simplicity for...
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Typical application scenarios

Internet of Things (IOT), fraud detection applications, recommendation engines, product...
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Key customers

Apple, Netflix, Uber, ING,, Intuit,Fidelity, NY Times, Outbrain, BazaarVoice, Best...
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Market metrics

Apache 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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