DBMS > ArangoDB vs. BigchainDB vs. Cassandra vs. Citus vs. Postgres-XL

System Properties Comparison ArangoDB vs. BigchainDB vs. Cassandra vs. Citus vs. Postgres-XL

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Native multi-model DBMS for graph, document, key/value and search. All in one engine and accessible with one query language.

BigchainDB is scalable blockchain database offering decentralization, immutability and native assets

Wide-column store based on ideas of BigTable and DynamoDB

Optimized for write access

Scalable hybrid operational and analytics RDBMS for big data use cases based on PostgreSQL

Based on PostgreSQL enhanced with MPP and write-scale-out cluster features

Primary database model

Document store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store
Search engine

Document store

Wide column store

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

Document store

Document store
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	3.32
Rank	#90	Overall
	#15	Document stores
	#5	Graph DBMS
	#12	Key-value stores
	#10	Search engines

Score	0.79
Rank	#212	Overall
	#36	Document stores

Score	101.89
Rank	#12	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	2.21
Rank	#118	Overall
	#56	Relational DBMS

Score	0.49
Rank	#256	Overall
	#117	Relational DBMS

Website

Technical documentation

docs.arangodb.com

bigchaindb.readthedocs.io/en/latest

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

docs.citusdata.com

www.postgres-xl.org/documentation

Social network pages

Developer

ArangoDB Inc.

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Initial release

2012

2016

2008

2010

2014

since 2012, originally named StormDB

Current release

3.11.5, November 2023

4.1.3, July 2023

8.1, December 2018

10 R1, October 2018

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache Version 2; Commercial license (Enterprise) available

Open Source

AGPL v3

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

AGPL, commercial license also available

Open Source

Mozilla public license

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.

ArangoDB Cloud –The Managed Cloud Service of ArangoDB. Provides fully managed, and monitored cluster deployments of any size, with enterprise-grade security. Get started for free and continue for as little as $0,21/hour.

Astra DB: Multi-cloud DBaaS built on Apache Cassandra.

Implementation language

C++

Python

Java

Server operating systems

Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux

Linux
macOS

Data scheme

schema-free

automatically recognizes schema within a collection

schema-free

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

string, double, boolean, list, hash

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.

yes

specific XML type available, but no XML query functionality

yes

XML type, but no XML query functionality

Secondary indexes

yes

restricted

only equality queries, not always the best performing solution

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

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

yes

standard, with numerous extensions

yes

distributed, parallel query execution

APIs and other access methods

AQL
Foxx Framework
Graph API (Gremlin)
GraphQL query language
HTTP API
Java & SpringData
JSON style queries
VelocyPack/VelocyStream

CLI Client
RESTful HTTP API

Proprietary protocol

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

ADO.NET
JDBC
native C library
ODBC
streaming API for large objects

Supported programming languages

C#
C++
Clojure
Elixir
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
R
Rust

Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Python
Ruby

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
Tcl

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Erlang
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
Tcl

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

JavaScript

user defined functions

realized in proprietary language PL/pgSQL or with common languages like Perl, Python, Tcl etc.

user defined functions

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

since version 2.0

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

Sharding

horizontal partitioning

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Source-replica replication with configurable replication factor

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

Source-replica replication

other methods possible by using 3rd party extensions

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

can be done with stored procedures in JavaScript

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency

configurable per collection or per write
Immediate Consistency
OneShard (highly available, fault-tolerant deployment mode with ACID semantics)

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

can be individually decided for each write operation

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

relationships in graphs

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

Atomicity and isolation are supported for single operations

ACID

MVCC

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

yes,with MongoDB ord RethinkDB

yes

In-memory capabilities

Is there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.

User concepts

Access control

yes

Access rights for users can be defined per object

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Graph and Beyond. With more than 11,000 stargazers on GitHub, ArangoDB is the leading...
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Apache Cassandra is the leading NoSQL, distributed database management system, well...
» more

Competitive advantages

Consolidation: As a native multi-model database, can be used as a full blown document...
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No single point of failure ensures 100% availability . Operational simplicity for...
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Typical application scenarios

Native multi-model in ArangoDB is being used for a broad range of projects across...
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Internet of Things (IOT), fraud detection applications, recommendation engines, product...
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Key customers

Cisco, Barclays, Refinitive, Siemens Mentor, Kabbage, Liaison, Douglas, MakeMyTrip,...
» more

Apple, Netflix, Uber, ING,, Intuit,Fidelity, NY Times, Outbrain, BazaarVoice, Best...
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Market metrics

ArangoDB is the leading native multi-model database with over 11,000 stargazers on...
» more

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

Licensing and pricing models

Very permissive Apache 2 License for Community Edition & commercial licenses are...
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Apache licenseÂ Pricing for commercial distributions provided by DataStax and available...
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