DBMS > Apache Phoenix vs. Cassandra vs. Firebird vs. RDF4J

System Properties Comparison Apache Phoenix vs. Cassandra vs. Firebird vs. RDF4J

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

A scale-out RDBMS with evolutionary schema built on Apache HBase

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

RDF4J is a Java framework for processing RDF data, supporting both memory-based and a disk-based storage.

Primary database model

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

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

Score	1.97
Rank	#126	Overall
	#59	Relational DBMS

Score	101.89
Rank	#12	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	20.82
Rank	#30	Overall
	#18	Relational DBMS

Score	0.69
Rank	#230	Overall
	#9	RDF stores

Website

Technical documentation

phoenix.apache.org

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

www.firebirdsql.org/en/reference-manuals

rdf4j.org/documentation

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Firebird Foundation

Since 2016 officially forked into an Eclipse project, former developer was Aduna Software.

Initial release

2014

2008

2000

As fork of Borland's InterBase

2004

Current release

5.0-HBase2, July 2018 and 4.15-HBase1, December 2019

4.1.3, July 2023

5.0.0, January 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache Version 2.0

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

Initial Developer's Public License

Open Source

Eclipse Distribution License (EDL), v1.0.

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.

Implementation language

Java

C and C++

Java

Server operating systems

Linux
Unix
Windows

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

AIX
FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
server-less

Firebird Embedded Server
Solaris
Unix
Windows

Linux
OS X
Unix
Windows

Data scheme

yes

late-bound, schema-on-read capabilities

schema-free

yes

RDF Schemas

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

yes

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

yes

APIs and other access methods

JDBC

Proprietary protocol

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

ADO.NET
C/C++ API
JDBC

Jaybird
ODBC
OLE DB

Java API
RIO

RDF Input/Output
Sail API
SeRQL

Sesame RDF Query Language
Sesame REST HTTP Protocol
SPARQL

Supported programming languages

C
C#
C++
Go
Groovy
Java
PHP
Python
Scala

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

Java
PHP
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

user defined functions

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

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

Source-replica replication

none

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Hadoop integration

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency or Eventual Consistency

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

can be individually decided for each write operation

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

Atomicity and isolation are supported for single operations

ACID

Isolation support depends on the API used

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 storage is supported as well

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 Control Lists (using HBase ACL) for RBAC, integration with Apache Ranger for RBAC & ABAC, multi-tenancy

Access rights for users can be defined per object

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

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

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Typical application scenarios

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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.
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Licensing and pricing models

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