DBMS > Apache Cassandra vs. Apache Pinot vs. Fauna vs. Firebase Realtime Database

System Properties Comparison Apache Cassandra vs. Apache Pinot vs. Fauna vs. Firebase Realtime Database

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Wide-column store based on ideas of BigTable and DynamoDB

Optimized for write access

Realtime distributed OLAP datastore, designed to answer OLAP queries with low latency

Fauna provides a web-native interface, with support for GraphQL and custom business logic that integrates seamlessly with the rest of the serverless ecosystem. The underlying globally distributed storage and compute platform is fast, consistent, and reliable, with a modern security infrastructure.

Cloud-hosted realtime document store. iOS, Android, and JavaScript clients share one Realtime Database instance and automatically receive updates with the newest data.

Primary database model

Wide column store

Relational DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS
Relational DBMS
Time Series DBMS

Document store

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

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

Score	98.94
Rank	#11	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	0.35
Rank	#274	Overall
	#128	Relational DBMS

Score	1.55
Rank	#143	Overall
	#26	Document stores
	#13	Graph DBMS
	#66	Relational DBMS
	#13	Time Series DBMS

Score	13.60
Rank	#39	Overall
	#6	Document stores

Website

cassandra.apache.org

pinot.apache.org

fauna.com

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

docs.pinot.apache.org

docs.fauna.com

firebase.google.com/docs/database

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Apache Software Foundation and contributors

Fauna, Inc.

Google

acquired by Google 2014

Initial release

2008

2015

2014

2012

Current release

5.0-rc1, July 2024

1.0.0, September 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

Apache Version 2.0

commercial

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

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

Server operating systems

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

All OS with a Java JDK11 or higher

hosted

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free

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

restricted

only equality queries, not always the best performing solution

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

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

SQL-like query language

APIs and other access methods

Proprietary protocol

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

JDBC

RESTful HTTP API

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

Supported programming languages

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

Go
Java
Python

C#
Go
Java
JavaScript
Python
Ruby
Scala
Swift

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

user defined functions

limited functionality with using 'rules'

Triggers

yes

Callbacks are triggered when data changes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

horizontal partitioning

consistent hashing

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

Multi-source replication

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

can be individually decided for each write operation

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency

if the client is offline
Immediate Consistency

if the client is online

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

yes

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

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 can be defined per object

Identity management, authentication, and access control

yes, based on authentication and database rules

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

Apache 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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