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DBMS > Apache Drill vs. Cassandra vs. IRONdb vs. PostgreSQL vs. RDF4J

System Properties Comparison Apache Drill vs. Cassandra vs. IRONdb vs. PostgreSQL vs. RDF4J

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines
NameApache Drill  Xexclude from comparisonCassandra  Xexclude from comparisonIRONdb  Xexclude from comparisonPostgreSQL  Xexclude from comparisonRDF4J infoformerly known as Sesame  Xexclude from comparison
IRONdb seems to be discontinued. Therefore it is excluded from the DB-Engines Ranking.
DescriptionSchema-free SQL Query Engine for Hadoop, NoSQL and Cloud StorageWide-column store based on ideas of BigTable and DynamoDB infoOptimized for write accessA distributed Time Series DBMS with a focus on scalability, fault tolerance and operational simplicityWidely used open source RDBMS infoDeveloped as objectoriented DBMS (Postgres), gradually enhanced with 'standards' like SQLRDF4J is a Java framework for processing RDF data, supporting both memory-based and a disk-based storage.
Primary database modelDocument store
Relational DBMS
Wide column storeTime Series DBMSRelational DBMS infowith object oriented extensions, e.g.: user defined types/functions and inheritance. Handling of key/value pairs with hstore module.RDF store
Secondary database modelsVector DBMS infostarting with release V5Document store
Graph DBMS infowith Apache Age
Spatial DBMS
Vector DBMS infowith pgvector extension
DB-Engines Ranking infomeasures the popularity of database management systemsranking trend
Trend Chart
Score2.02
Rank#124  Overall
#22  Document stores
#59  Relational DBMS
Score98.83
Rank#12  Overall
#1  Wide column stores
Score636.25
Rank#4  Overall
#4  Relational DBMS
Score0.74
Rank#222  Overall
#9  RDF stores
Websitedrill.apache.orgcassandra.apache.orgwww.circonus.com/solutions/time-series-database/www.postgresql.orgrdf4j.org
Technical documentationdrill.apache.org/­docscassandra.apache.org/­doc/­latestdocs.circonus.com/irondb/category/getting-startedwww.postgresql.org/­docsrdf4j.org/­documentation
DeveloperApache Software FoundationApache Software Foundation infoApache top level project, originally developped by FacebookCirconus LLC.PostgreSQL Global Development Group infowww.postgresql.org/­developerSince 2016 officially forked into an Eclipse project, former developer was Aduna Software.
Initial release2012200820171989 info1989: Postgres, 1996: PostgreSQL2004
Current release1.20.3, January 20234.1.3, July 2023V0.10.20, January 201816.3, May 2024
License infoCommercial or Open SourceOpen Source infoApache Version 2Open Source infoApache version 2commercialOpen Source infoBSDOpen Source infoEclipse Distribution License (EDL), v1.0.
Cloud-based only infoOnly available as a cloud servicenonononono
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Implementation languageJavaC and C++CJava
Server operating systemsLinux
OS X
Windows
BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows
LinuxFreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
NetBSD
OpenBSD
OS X
Solaris
Unix
Windows
Linux
OS X
Unix
Windows
Data schemeschema-freeschema-freeschema-freeyesyes infoRDF Schemas
Typing infopredefined data types such as float or dateyesyesyes infotext, numeric, histogramsyesyes
XML support infoSome form of processing data in XML format, e.g. support for XML data structures, and/or support for XPath, XQuery or XSLT.nononoyes infospecific XML-type available, but no XML query functionality.
Secondary indexesnorestricted infoonly equality queries, not always the best performing solutionnoyesyes
SQL infoSupport of SQLSQL SELECT statement is SQL:2003 compliantSQL-like SELECT, DML and DDL statements (CQL)SQL-like query language (Circonus Analytics Query Language: CAQL)yes infostandard with numerous extensionsno
APIs and other access methodsJDBC
ODBC
RESTful HTTP API
Proprietary protocol infoCQL (Cassandra Query Language, an SQL-like language)
Thrift
HTTP APIADO.NET
JDBC
native C library
ODBC
streaming API for large objects
Java API
RIO infoRDF Input/Output
Sail API
SeRQL infoSesame RDF Query Language
Sesame REST HTTP Protocol
SPARQL
Supported programming languagesC++C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript infoNode.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala
.Net
C
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
JavaScript (Node.js)
Lisp
Lua
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Rust
Scala
.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java infoJDBC
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
Tcl
Java
PHP
Python
Server-side scripts infoStored proceduresuser defined functionsnoyes, in Luauser defined functions inforealized in proprietary language PL/pgSQL or with common languages like Perl, Python, Tcl etc.yes
Triggersnoyesnoyesyes
Partitioning methods infoMethods for storing different data on different nodesShardingSharding infono "single point of failure"Automatic, metric affinity per nodepartitioning by range, list and (since PostgreSQL 11) by hashnone
Replication methods infoMethods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodesselectable replication factor infoRepresentation of geographical distribution of servers is possibleconfigurable replication factor, datacenter awareSource-replica replication infoother methods possible by using 3rd party extensionsnone
MapReduce infoOffers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methodsyesyesnonono
Consistency concepts infoMethods to ensure consistency in a distributed systemnoneEventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency infocan be individually decided for each write operation
Immediate consistency per node, eventual consistency across nodesImmediate Consistency
Foreign keys infoReferential integritynononoyes
Transaction concepts infoSupport to ensure data integrity after non-atomic manipulations of datanono infoAtomicity and isolation are supported for single operationsnoACIDACID infoIsolation support depends on the API used
Concurrency infoSupport for concurrent manipulation of datayesyesyesyesyes
Durability infoSupport for making data persistentDepending on the underlying data sourceyesyesyesyes infoin-memory storage is supported as well
In-memory capabilities infoIs there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.Depending on the underlying data sourcenonono
User concepts infoAccess controlDepending on the underlying data sourceAccess rights for users can be defined per objectnofine grained access rights according to SQL-standardno
More information provided by the system vendor
Apache DrillCassandraIRONdbPostgreSQLRDF4J infoformerly known as Sesame
Specific characteristicsApache Cassandra is the leading NoSQL, distributed database management system, well...
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Competitive advantagesNo single point of failure ensures 100% availability . Operational simplicity for...
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Typical application scenariosInternet of Things (IOT), fraud detection applications, recommendation engines, product...
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Key customersApple, Netflix, Uber, ING,, Intuit,Fidelity, NY Times, Outbrain, BazaarVoice, Best...
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Market metricsCassandra is used by 40% of the Fortune 100.
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Licensing and pricing modelsApache license  Pricing for commercial distributions provided by DataStax and available...
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