DBMS > Apache Phoenix vs. Cassandra vs. RDF4J vs. Spark SQL vs. VoltDB

System Properties Comparison Apache Phoenix vs. Cassandra vs. RDF4J vs. Spark SQL vs. VoltDB

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

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

Spark SQL is a component on top of 'Spark Core' for structured data processing

Distributed In-Memory NewSQL RDBMS

Used for OLTP applications with a high frequency of relatively simple transactions, that can hold all their data in memory

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	2.06
Rank	#123	Overall
	#58	Relational DBMS

Score	98.83
Rank	#12	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	0.74
Rank	#222	Overall
	#9	RDF stores

Score	18.04
Rank	#33	Overall
	#20	Relational DBMS

Score	1.47
Rank	#157	Overall
	#73	Relational DBMS

Website

Technical documentation

phoenix.apache.org

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

rdf4j.org/documentation

spark.apache.org/docs/latest/sql-programming-guide.html

docs.voltdb.com

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

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

Apache Software Foundation

VoltDB Inc.

Initial release

2014

2008

2004

2014

2010

Current release

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

4.1.3, July 2023

3.5.0 ( 2.13), September 2023

11.3, April 2022

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache Version 2.0

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

Eclipse Distribution License (EDL), v1.0.

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

AGPL for Community Edition, commercial license for Enterprise, AWS, and Pro Editions

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

Scala

Java, C++

Server operating systems

Linux
Unix
Windows

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
OS X
Unix
Windows

Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
OS X

for development

Data scheme

yes

late-bound, schema-on-read capabilities

schema-free

yes

RDF Schemas

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

yes

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

SQL-like DML and DDL statements

yes

only a subset of SQL 99

APIs and other access methods

JDBC

Proprietary protocol

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

Java API
RIO

RDF Input/Output
Sail API
SeRQL

Sesame RDF Query Language
Sesame REST HTTP Protocol
SPARQL

JDBC
ODBC

Java API
JDBC
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

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

Java
PHP
Python

Java
Python
R
Scala

C#
C++
Erlang

not officially supported
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
PHP
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

user defined functions

yes

Java

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

none

yes, utilizing Spark Core

Sharding

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

none

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

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

FOREIGN KEY constraints are not supported

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

ACID

Transactions are executed single-threaded within stored procedures

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Data access is serialized by the server

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

in-memory storage is supported as well

yes

Snapshots and command logging

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 and roles with access to stored procedures

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

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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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