DBMS > Apache Druid vs. Cassandra vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. Lovefield vs. TimescaleDB

System Properties Comparison Apache Druid vs. Cassandra vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. Lovefield vs. TimescaleDB

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

Cloud-hosted realtime document store. iOS, Android, and JavaScript clients share one Realtime Database instance and automatically receive updates with the newest data.

Embeddable relational database for web apps written in pure JavaScript

A time series DBMS optimized for fast ingest and complex queries, based on PostgreSQL

Primary database model

Relational DBMS
Time Series DBMS

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

Relational DBMS

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

Score	3.25
Rank	#90	Overall
	#47	Relational DBMS
	#7	Time Series DBMS

Score	98.83
Rank	#12	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	13.64
Rank	#39	Overall
	#6	Document stores

Score	0.33
Rank	#286	Overall
	#131	Relational DBMS

Score	4.46
Rank	#71	Overall
	#5	Time Series DBMS

Website

druid.apache.org

cassandra.apache.org

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

google.github.io/lovefield

www.timescale.com

Technical documentation

druid.apache.org/docs/latest/design

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

firebase.google.com/docs/database

github.com/google/lovefield/blob/master/docs/spec_index.md

docs.timescale.com

Developer

Apache Software Foundation and contributors

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Google

acquired by Google 2014

Google

Timescale

Initial release

2012

2008

2012

2014

2017

Current release

29.0.1, April 2024

4.1.3, July 2023

2.1.12, February 2017

2.15.0, May 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache license v2

Open Source

Apache version 2

commercial

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

Apache 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

JavaScript

Server operating systems

Linux
OS X
Unix

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

hosted

server-less, requires a JavaScript environment (browser, Node.js)

tested with Chrome, Firefox, IE, Safari

Linux
OS X
Windows

Data scheme

yes

schema-less columns are supported

schema-free

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

numerics, strings, booleans, arrays, JSON blobs, geospatial dimensions, currencies, binary data, other complex data types

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.

yes

Secondary indexes

yes

restricted

only equality queries, not always the best performing solution

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL for querying

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

SQL-like query language

via JavaScript builder pattern

yes

full PostgreSQL SQL syntax

APIs and other access methods

JDBC
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Proprietary protocol

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

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

ADO.NET
JDBC
native C library
ODBC
streaming API for large objects

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

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

JavaScript

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java

JDBC
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

limited functionality with using 'rules'

user defined functions, PL/pgSQL, PL/Tcl, PL/Perl, PL/Python, PL/Java, PL/PHP, PL/R, PL/Ruby, PL/Scheme, PL/Unix shell

Triggers

yes

Callbacks are triggered when data changes

Using read-only observers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

manual/auto, time-based

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

none

yes, across time and space (hash partitioning) attributes

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

none

Source-replica replication with hot standby and reads on replicas

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

Eventual Consistency

if the client is offline
Immediate Consistency

if the client is online

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

Atomicity and isolation are supported for single operations

yes

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

yes, by using IndexedDB or the cloud service Firebase Realtime Database

yes

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

using MemoryDB

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

yes, based on authentication and database rules

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

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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