DBMS > BigchainDB vs. Cassandra vs. Datomic vs. IRONdb vs. QuestDB

System Properties Comparison BigchainDB vs. Cassandra vs. Datomic vs. IRONdb vs. QuestDB

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

IRONdb seems to be discontinued. Therefore it is excluded from the DB-Engines Ranking.

Description

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

Datomic builds on immutable values, supports point-in-time queries and uses 3rd party systems for durability

A distributed Time Series DBMS with a focus on scalability, fault tolerance and operational simplicity

A high performance open source SQL database for time series data

Primary database model

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

Relational DBMS

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

Score	0.79
Rank	#212	Overall
	#36	Document stores

Score	101.89
Rank	#12	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	1.59
Rank	#150	Overall
	#69	Relational DBMS

Score	2.52
Rank	#109	Overall
	#9	Time Series DBMS

Website

www.bigchaindb.com

cassandra.apache.org

www.datomic.com

www.circonus.com/solutions/time-series-database/

questdb.io

Technical documentation

bigchaindb.readthedocs.io/en/latest

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

docs.datomic.com

docs.circonus.com/irondb/category/getting-started

questdb.io/docs

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Cognitect

Circonus LLC.

QuestDB Technology Inc

Initial release

2016

2008

2012

2017

2014

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

1.0.6735, June 2023

V0.10.20, January 2018

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

AGPL v3

Open Source

Apache version 2

commercial

limited edition free

commercial

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.

Implementation language

Python

Java

Java, Clojure

C and C++

Java (Zero-GC), C++, Rust

Server operating systems

Linux

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

All OS with a Java VM

Linux

Linux
macOS
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free

yes

schema-free via InfluxDB Line Protocol

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

text, numeric, histograms

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 (Circonus Analytics Query Language: CAQL)

SQL with time-series extensions

APIs and other access methods

CLI Client
RESTful HTTP API

Proprietary protocol

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

RESTful HTTP API

HTTP API

HTTP REST
InfluxDB Line Protocol (TCP/UDP)
JDBC
PostgreSQL wire protocol

Supported programming languages

Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Python
Ruby

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

Clojure
Java

.Net
C
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
JavaScript (Node.js)
Lisp
Lua
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Rust
Scala

PostgreSQL driver
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python
Rust

over HTTP

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

Transaction Functions

yes, in Lua

Triggers

yes

By using transaction functions

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

none

But extensive use of caching in the application peers

Automatic, metric affinity per node

horizontal partitioning (by timestamps)

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

none

But extensive use of caching in the application peers

configurable replication factor, datacenter aware

Source-replica replication with eventual consistency

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

Immediate consistency per node, eventual consistency across nodes

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

Transaction concepts

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

Atomicity and isolation are supported for single operations

ACID

ACID for single-table writes

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes,with MongoDB ord RethinkDB

yes

using external storage systems (e.g. Cassandra, DynamoDB, PostgreSQL, Couchbase and others)

yes

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

recommended only for testing and development

yes

through memory mapped files

User concepts

Access control

yes

Access rights for users can be defined per object

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Apache Cassandra is the leading NoSQL, distributed database management system, well...
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Relational model with native time series support Column-based storage and time partitioned...
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Competitive advantages

No single point of failure ensures 100% availability . Operational simplicity for...
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High ingestion throughput: peak of 4M rows/sec (TSBS Benchmark) Code optimizations...
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Typical application scenarios

Internet of Things (IOT), fraud detection applications, recommendation engines, product...
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Financial tick data Industrial IoT Application Metrics Monitoring
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Key customers

Apple, Netflix, Uber, ING,, Intuit,Fidelity, NY Times, Outbrain, BazaarVoice, Best...
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Banks & Hedge funds, Yahoo, OKX, Airbus, Aquis Exchange, Net App, Cloudera, Airtel,...
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Market metrics

Cassandra is used by 40% of the Fortune 100.
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Licensing and pricing models

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