DBMS > Apache Drill vs. Cassandra vs. Datastax Enterprise vs. FoundationDB vs. Milvus

System Properties Comparison Apache Drill vs. Cassandra vs. Datastax Enterprise vs. FoundationDB vs. Milvus

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Created as commercial project in 2013, FoundationDB has been acquired by Apple in March 2015 and was withdrawn from the market.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

Schema-free SQL Query Engine for Hadoop, NoSQL and Cloud Storage

Wide-column store based on ideas of BigTable and DynamoDB

Optimized for write access

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.

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

A DBMS designed for efficient storage of vector data and vector similarity searches

Primary database model

Document store
Relational DBMS

Wide column store

Document store

supported via specific layer
Key-value store
Relational DBMS

supported via specific SQL-layer

Vector DBMS

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS
Search engine
Vector DBMS

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

Score	1.95
Rank	#127	Overall
	#23	Document stores
	#60	Relational DBMS

Score	101.89
Rank	#12	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	5.80
Rank	#60	Overall
	#4	Wide column stores

Score	1.03
Rank	#190	Overall
	#31	Document stores
	#28	Key-value stores
	#89	Relational DBMS

Score	2.31
Rank	#113	Overall
	#3	Vector DBMS

Website

drill.apache.org

cassandra.apache.org

www.datastax.com/products/datastax-enterprise

github.com/apple/foundationdb

milvus.io

Technical documentation

drill.apache.org/docs

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

docs.datastax.com

apple.github.io/foundationdb

milvus.io/docs/overview.md

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

DataStax

FoundationDB

Initial release

2012

2008

2011

2013

2019

Current release

1.20.3, January 2023

4.1.3, July 2023

6.8, April 2020

6.2.28, November 2020

2.3.4, January 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache Version 2

Open Source

Apache version 2

commercial

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

Apache Version 2.0

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

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.

Datastax Astra DB: Astra DB simplifies cloud-native Cassandra application development for your apps, microservices and functions. Deploy in minutes on AWS, Google Cloud, Azure, and have it managed for you by the experts, with serverless, pay-as-you-go pricing.

Zilliz Cloud – Cloud-native service for Milvus

Implementation language

Java

C++

C++, Go

Server operating systems

Linux
OS X
Windows

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
OS X

Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
macOS

10.14 or later
Windows

with WSL 2 enabled

Data scheme

schema-free

some layers support schemas

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

some layers support typing

Vector, Numeric and String

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

SQL SELECT statement is SQL:2003 compliant

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

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

supported in specific SQL layer only

APIs and other access methods

JDBC
ODBC
RESTful HTTP API

Proprietary protocol

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

Proprietary protocol

CQL (Cassandra Query Language)
TinkerPop Gremlin

with DSE Graph

RESTful HTTP API

Supported programming languages

C++

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

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

.Net
C
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
PHP
Python
Ruby
Swift

C++
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

user defined functions

in SQL-layer only

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

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

yes

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

none

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

can be individually decided for each write operation

Immediate Consistency
Tunable Consistency

consistency level can be individually decided with each write operation

Linearizable consistency

Bounded Staleness
Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency
Session Consistency
Tunable Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

in SQL-layer only

Transaction concepts

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

Atomicity and isolation are supported for single operations

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

Depending on the underlying data source

yes

In-memory capabilities

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

Depending on the underlying data source

yes

User concepts

Access control

Depending on the underlying data source

Access rights for users can be defined per object

Role based access control and fine grained access rights

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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Milvus is an open-source and cloud-native vector database built for production-ready...
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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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Highly available, versatile, and robust with millisecond latency. Supports batch...
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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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RAG: retrieval augmented generation Video media : video understanding, video deduplication....
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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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Milvus is trusted by thousands of enterprises, including PayPal, eBay, IKEA, LINE,...
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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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As of January 2024, 25k+ GitHub stars 10M+ downloads and installations 3k+ enterprise...
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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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Milvus was released under the open-source Apache License 2.0 in October 2019. Fully-managed...
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