DBMS > Apache Cassandra vs. FoundationDB vs. MongoDB vs. Quasardb

System Properties Comparison Apache Cassandra vs. FoundationDB vs. MongoDB vs. Quasardb

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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Created as commercial project in 2013, FoundationDB has been acquired by Apple in March 2015 and was withdrawn from the market.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

Wide-column store based on ideas of BigTable and DynamoDB

Optimized for write access

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

One of the most popular document stores available both as a fully managed cloud service and for deployment on self-managed infrastructure

Distributed, high-performance timeseries database

Primary database model

Wide column store

Document store

supported via specific layer
Key-value store
Relational DBMS

supported via specific SQL-layer

Document store

Time Series DBMS

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

Spatial DBMS
Search engine

integrated Lucene index, currently in MongoDB Atlas only.
Time Series DBMS

Time Series Collections introduced in Release 5.0
Vector DBMS

currently available in the MongoDB Atlas cloud service only

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

Score	108.05
Rank	#11	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	0.89
Rank	#197	Overall
	#32	Document stores
	#29	Key-value stores
	#92	Relational DBMS

Score	402.51
Rank	#5	Overall
	#1	Document stores

Score	0.17
Rank	#320	Overall
	#28	Time Series DBMS

Website

cassandra.apache.org

github.com/apple/foundationdb

www.mongodb.com

quasar.ai

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

apple.github.io/foundationdb

www.mongodb.com/docs/manual

doc.quasar.ai/master

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

FoundationDB

MongoDB, Inc

quasardb

Initial release

2008

2013

2009

Current release

5.0-rc1, July 2024

6.2.28, November 2020

7.0.5, January 2024

3.14.1, January 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

MongoDB Inc.'s Server Side Public License v1. Prior versions were published under GNU AGPL v3.0. Commercial licenses are also available.

commercial

Free community edition, Non-profit organizations and non-commercial usage are eligible for free licenses

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

MongoDB available as DBaaS (MongoDB Atlas)

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Implementation language

Java

C++

Server operating systems

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

some layers support schemas

schema-free

Although schema-free, documents of the same collection often follow the same structure. Optionally impose all or part of a schema by defining a JSON schema.

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

some layers support typing

yes

string, integer, double, decimal, boolean, date, object_id, geospatial

yes

integer and binary

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

with tags

SQL

Support of SQL

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

supported in specific SQL layer only

Read-only SQL queries via the MongoDB Atlas SQL Interface

SQL-like query language

APIs and other access methods

Proprietary protocol

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

GraphQL
HTTP REST
Prisma
proprietary protocol using JSON

HTTP API

Supported programming languages

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

Actionscript

unofficial driver
C
C#
C++
Clojure

unofficial driver
ColdFusion

unofficial driver
D

unofficial driver
Dart

unofficial driver
Delphi

unofficial driver
Erlang
Go
Groovy

unofficial driver
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Kotlin
Lisp

unofficial driver
Lua

unofficial driver
MatLab

unofficial driver
Perl
PHP
PowerShell

unofficial driver
Prolog

unofficial driver
Python
R

unofficial driver
Ruby
Rust
Scala
Smalltalk

unofficial driver
Swift

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

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

in SQL-layer only

JavaScript

Triggers

yes

in MongoDB Atlas only

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

Sharding

Partitioned by hashed, ranged, or zoned sharding keys. Live resharding allows users to change their shard keys as an online operation with zero downtime.

Sharding

consistent hashing

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

yes

Multi-Source deployments with MongoDB Atlas Global Clusters
Source-replica replication

Source-replica replication with selectable replication factor

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

with Hadoop integration

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

can be individually decided for each write operation

Linearizable consistency

Eventual Consistency

can be individually decided for each read operation
Immediate Consistency

default behaviour

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

in SQL-layer only

typically not used, however similar functionality with DBRef possible

Transaction concepts

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

Atomicity and isolation are supported for single operations

ACID

Multi-document ACID Transactions with snapshot isolation

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

optional, enabled by default

yes

by using LevelDB

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

In-memory storage engine introduced with MongoDB version 3.2

yes

Transient mode

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users can be defined per object

Access rights for users and roles

Cryptographically strong user authentication and audit trail

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