DBMS > Apache Druid vs. Cassandra vs. CouchDB vs. Google Cloud Spanner vs. Rockset

System Properties Comparison Apache Druid vs. Cassandra vs. CouchDB vs. Google Cloud Spanner vs. Rockset

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Open-source analytics data store designed for sub-second OLAP queries on high dimensionality and high cardinality data

Wide-column store based on ideas of BigTable and DynamoDB

Optimized for write access

A native JSON - document store inspired by Lotus Notes, scalable from globally distributed server-clusters down to mobile phones.

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.

A scalable, reliable search and analytics service in the cloud, built on RocksDB

Primary database model

Relational DBMS
Time Series DBMS

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

Spatial DBMS

using the Geocouch extension

Relational DBMS
Search engine

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

Score	3.34
Rank	#88	Overall
	#48	Relational DBMS
	#7	Time Series DBMS

Score	101.89
Rank	#12	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	9.30
Rank	#45	Overall
	#7	Document stores

Score	2.89
Rank	#103	Overall
	#52	Relational DBMS

Score	0.79
Rank	#211	Overall
	#35	Document stores

Website

druid.apache.org

cassandra.apache.org

couchdb.apache.org

cloud.google.com/spanner

rockset.com

Technical documentation

druid.apache.org/docs/latest/design

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

docs.couchdb.org/en/stable

cloud.google.com/spanner/docs

docs.rockset.com

Developer

Apache Software Foundation and contributors

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top-level project, originally developed by Damien Katz, a former Lotus Notes developer

Google

Rockset

Initial release

2012

2008

2005

2017

2019

Current release

29.0.1, April 2024

4.1.3, July 2023

3.3.3, December 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache license v2

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

Apache version 2

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.

Implementation language

Java

Erlang

C++

Server operating systems

Linux
OS X
Unix

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

Android
BSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

hosted

Data scheme

yes

schema-less columns are supported

schema-free

yes

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

dynamic typing

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.

ingestion from XML files supported

Secondary indexes

yes

restricted

only equality queries, not always the best performing solution

yes

via views

yes

all fields are automatically indexed

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL for querying

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

yes

Query statements complying to ANSI 2011

Read-only SQL queries, including JOINs

APIs and other access methods

JDBC
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Proprietary protocol

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

RESTful HTTP/JSON API

gRPC (using protocol buffers) API
JDBC

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

HTTP REST

Supported programming languages

Clojure
JavaScript
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Scala

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

C
C#
ColdFusion
Erlang
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Lisp
Lua
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
PL/SQL
Python
Ruby
Smalltalk

Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

View functions in JavaScript

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

manual/auto, time-based

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

Sharding

improved architecture with release 2.0

Sharding

Automatic sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes, via HDFS, S3 or other storage engines

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

Multi-source replication with 3 replicas for regional instances.

yes

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

Eventual Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

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

Atomicity and isolation are supported for single operations

atomic operations within a single document possible

ACID

Strict serializable isolation

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

strategy: optimistic locking

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.

User concepts

Access control

RBAC using LDAP or Druid internals for users and groups for read/write by datasource and system

Access rights for users can be defined per object

Access rights for users can be defined per database

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

Access rights for users and organizations can be defined via Rockset console

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Apache Cassandra is the leading NoSQL, distributed database management system, well...
» more

Competitive advantages

No single point of failure ensures 100% availability . Operational simplicity for...
» more

Typical application scenarios

Internet of Things (IOT), fraud detection applications, recommendation engines, product...
» more

Key customers

Apple, Netflix, Uber, ING,, Intuit,Fidelity, NY Times, Outbrain, BazaarVoice, Best...
» more

Market metrics

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...
» more

We invite representatives of system vendors to contact us for updating and extending the system information,
and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.