DBMS > Apache Impala vs. Cassandra vs. SQLite vs. Stardog vs. TiDB

System Properties Comparison Apache Impala vs. Cassandra vs. SQLite vs. Stardog vs. TiDB

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

Widely used embeddable, in-process RDBMS

Enterprise Knowledge Graph platform and graph DBMS with high availability, high performance reasoning, and virtualization

TiDB is an open source distributed SQL database that supports Hybrid Transactional/Analytical Processing (HTAP) workloads. It is MySQL compatible and features horizontal scalability, strong consistency, and high availability.

Primary database model

Secondary database models

Document store

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

Document store

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

Score	13.77
Rank	#40	Overall
	#24	Relational DBMS

Score	101.89
Rank	#12	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	114.32
Rank	#10	Overall
	#7	Relational DBMS

Score	2.02
Rank	#123	Overall
	#11	Graph DBMS
	#6	RDF stores

Score	4.66
Rank	#70	Overall
	#38	Relational DBMS

Website

Technical documentation

impala.apache.org/impala-docs.html

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

www.sqlite.org/docs.html

docs.stardog.com

docs.pingcap.com/tidb/stable

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top-level project, originally developed by Cloudera

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Dwayne Richard Hipp

Stardog-Union

PingCAP, Inc.

Initial release

2013

2008

2000

2010

2016

Current release

4.1.0, June 2022

4.1.3, July 2023

3.46.0 (23 May 2024), May 2024

7.3.0, May 2020

8.1.0, May 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache Version 2

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

Public Domain

commercial

60-day fully-featured trial license; 1-year fully-featured non-commercial use license for academics/students

Open Source

Apache 2.0

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.

TiDB Cloud: Fully-managed TiDB Service. Bring everything great about TiDB to the cloud.

Implementation language

C++

Java

Go, Rust

Server operating systems

Linux

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

server-less

Linux
macOS
Windows

Linux

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

yes

dynamic column types

schema-free and OWL/RDFS-schema support

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

not rigid because of 'dynamic typing' concept.

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.

Import/export of XML data possible

Secondary indexes

yes

restricted

only equality queries, not always the best performing solution

yes

supports real-time indexing in full-text and geospatial

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like DML and DDL statements

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

yes

SQL-92 is not fully supported

Yes, compatible with all major SQL variants through dedicated BI/SQL Server

yes

APIs and other access methods

JDBC
ODBC

Proprietary protocol

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

ADO.NET

inofficial driver
JDBC

inofficial driver
ODBC

inofficial driver

GraphQL query language
HTTP API
Jena RDF API
OWL
RDF4J API
Sesame REST HTTP Protocol
SNARL
SPARQL
Spring Data
Stardog Studio
TinkerPop 3

GORM
JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary protocol
SQLAlchemy

Supported programming languages

All languages supporting JDBC/ODBC

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

Actionscript
Ada
Basic
C
C#
C++
D
Delphi
Forth
Fortran
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Lisp
Lua
MatLab
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
PL/SQL
Python
R
Ruby
Scala
Scheme
Smalltalk
Tcl

.Net
Clojure
Groovy
Java
JavaScript
Python
Ruby

Ada
C
C#
C++
D
Delphi
Eiffel
Erlang
Haskell
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

user defined functions and integration of map-reduce

user defined functions and aggregates, HTTP Server extensions in Java

Triggers

yes

via event handlers

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

none

horizontal partitioning (by key range)

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

none

Multi-source replication in HA-Cluster

Using Raft consensus algorithm to ensure data replication with strong consistency among multiple replicas.

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

query execution via MapReduce

yes

with TiSpark Connector

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 in HA-Cluster

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

relationships in graphs

yes

full support since version 6.6

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

via file-system locks

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.

yes

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

Access rights for users and roles

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...
» more

TiDB is an advanced open-source, distributed SQL database for modern application...
» more

Competitive advantages

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

- HORIZONTAL SCALING : TiDB grants total transparency into your data workloads without...
» more

Typical application scenarios

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

TiDB is ideal for transactional applications that require extreme scalability and...
» more

Key customers

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

Block, Pinterest, Catalyst, Bolt, Flipkart, Capcom, Shopee (E-commerce), JD Cloud...
» more

Market metrics

Cassandra is used by 40% of the Fortune 100.
» more

34K+ GitHub stars 5K+ members in TiDB Community Slack 1K+ community contributors...
» more

Licensing and pricing models

Apache licenseÂ Pricing for commercial distributions provided by DataStax and available...
» more

TiDB Community : Free open source software (Apache 2.0) TiDB Self-Hosted : Enterprise...
» more

News

How Concide Built its Chat Platform with Enhanced Document Management for Legal Tech Professionals
23 May 2024

Astra Vectorize: Generate Vector Embeddings with 1 Line of Code
22 May 2024

GitHub Copilot + DataStax Astra DB: Build GenAI Apps 100x Faster
21 May 2024

Empowering On-Premises Deployments with Generative AI: Introducing Vector Search for a Self-Managed Modern Architecture
15 May 2024

Tips and Tricks for the DataStax Astra CLI
7 May 2024

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.