DBMS > Apache Impala vs. Cassandra vs. Firebird vs. MaxDB

System Properties Comparison Apache Impala vs. Cassandra vs. Firebird vs. MaxDB

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Analytic DBMS for Hadoop

Wide-column store based on ideas of BigTable and DynamoDB

Optimized for write access

Firebird is an open source RDBMS forked from Borland's InterBase

A robust and reliable RDBMS optimized to run all major SAP solutions

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Wide column store

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

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

Score	12.45
Rank	#40	Overall
	#24	Relational DBMS

Score	98.83
Rank	#12	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	20.50
Rank	#30	Overall
	#18	Relational DBMS

Score	2.26
Rank	#114	Overall
	#55	Relational DBMS

Website

Technical documentation

impala.apache.org/impala-docs.html

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

www.firebirdsql.org/en/reference-manuals

maxdb.sap.com/documentation

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top-level project, originally developed by Cloudera

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Firebird Foundation

SAP, acquired from Software AG (Adabas-D) in 1997

Initial release

2013

2008

2000

As fork of Borland's InterBase

1984

Current release

4.1.0, June 2022

4.1.3, July 2023

5.0.0, January 2024

7.9.10.12, February 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache Version 2

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

Initial Developer's Public License

commercial

Limited community edition free

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

C++

Java

C and C++

C++

Server operating systems

Linux

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

AIX
FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
server-less

Firebird Embedded Server
Solaris
Unix
Windows

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
Solaris
Windows

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

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

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like DML and DDL statements

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

yes

APIs and other access methods

JDBC
ODBC

Proprietary protocol

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

ADO.NET
C/C++ API
JDBC

Jaybird
ODBC
OLE DB

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
WebDAV

Supported programming languages

All languages supporting JDBC/ODBC

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

C
C#
C++
Delphi
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Lua
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

.Net
C#
Java
Perl
PHP
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

user defined functions and integration of map-reduce

PSQL

yes

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

Source-replica replication

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

query execution via MapReduce

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

can be individually decided for each write operation

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

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Features a multi-generational MVCC architecture, readers do not block writers

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

Access rights for users, groups and roles

based on Apache Sentry and Kerberos

Access rights for users can be defined per object

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

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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