DBMS > Apache Druid vs. Cassandra vs. Informix vs. Newts vs. Sphinx

System Properties Comparison Apache Druid vs. Cassandra vs. Informix vs. Newts vs. Sphinx

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 secure embeddable database from IBM, positioned besides IBM Db2 as a relatively low-cost product optimized for OLTP and Internet of Things data

Time Series DBMS based on Cassandra

Open source search engine for searching in data from different sources, e.g. relational databases

Primary database model

Relational DBMS
Time Series DBMS

Wide column store

Relational DBMS

Since Version 12.10 support for JSON/BSON datatypes compatible with MongoDB

Time Series DBMS

Search engine

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

Document store
Spatial DBMS
Time Series DBMS

with Informix TimeSeries Extension

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	17.87
Rank	#35	Overall
	#22	Relational DBMS

Score	0.00
Rank	#383	Overall
	#41	Time Series DBMS

Score	5.98
Rank	#56	Overall
	#5	Search engines

Website

druid.apache.org

cassandra.apache.org

www.ibm.com/products/informix

opennms.github.io/newts

sphinxsearch.com

Technical documentation

druid.apache.org/docs/latest/design

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

informix.hcldoc.com
www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SSGU8G/welcomeIfxServers.html

github.com/OpenNMS/newts/wiki

sphinxsearch.com/docs

Developer

Apache Software Foundation and contributors

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

IBM, HCL Technologies

Effective May 1st, 2017, HCL took on development, technical support, and product management teams, and works jointly with IBM on product strategy, marketing, and sales.

OpenNMS Group

Sphinx Technologies Inc.

Initial release

2012

2008

1984

2014

2001

Current release

29.0.1, April 2024

4.1.3, July 2023

14.10.FC5, November 2020

3.5.1, February 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache license v2

Open Source

Apache version 2

commercial

free developer edition available

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

GPL version 2, commercial licence available

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.

Implementation language

Java

C, C++ and Java

Java

C++

Server operating systems

Linux
OS X
Unix

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
macOS
Solaris
Windows

Linux
OS X
Windows

FreeBSD
Linux
NetBSD
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Data scheme

yes

schema-less columns are supported

schema-free

yes

schema-free

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

Since Version 12.10 support for JSON/BSON datatypes

yes

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

yes

restricted

only equality queries, not always the best performing solution

yes

full-text index on all search fields

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL for querying

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

yes

SQL-like query language (SphinxQL)

APIs and other access methods

JDBC
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Proprietary protocol

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

JDBC
JSON API

MongoDB compatible
MQTT (Message Queue Telemetry Transport)
ODBC
RESTful HTTP API

HTTP REST
Java API

Proprietary protocol

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

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

Java

C++

unofficial client library
Java
Perl

unofficial client library
PHP
Python
Ruby

unofficial client library

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

manual/auto, time-based

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

Sharding

based on Cassandra

Sharding

Partitioning is done manually, search queries against distributed index is supported

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

selectable replication factor

based on Cassandra

none

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

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency

based on Cassandra
Immediate Consistency

based on Cassandra

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

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

The original contents of fields are not stored in the Sphinx index.

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

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

Users with fine-grained authentication, authorization, and auditing controls

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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