DBMS > Apache Cassandra vs. BigchainDB vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. Postgres-XL vs. RDFox

System Properties Comparison Apache Cassandra vs. BigchainDB vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. Postgres-XL vs. RDFox

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Wide-column store based on ideas of BigTable and DynamoDB

Optimized for write access

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

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

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

High performance knowledge graph and semantic reasoning engine

Primary database model

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

Document store
Spatial DBMS

Relational DBMS

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

Score	98.94
Rank	#11	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	0.76
Rank	#216	Overall
	#36	Document stores

Score	13.60
Rank	#39	Overall
	#6	Document stores

Score	0.43
Rank	#260	Overall
	#119	Relational DBMS

Score	0.22
Rank	#305	Overall
	#25	Graph DBMS
	#15	RDF stores

Website

cassandra.apache.org

www.bigchaindb.com

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

www.postgres-xl.org

www.oxfordsemantic.tech

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

bigchaindb.readthedocs.io/en/latest

firebase.google.com/docs/database

www.postgres-xl.org/documentation

docs.oxfordsemantic.tech

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Google

acquired by Google 2014

Oxford Semantic Technologies

Initial release

2008

2016

2012

2014

since 2012, originally named StormDB

2017

Current release

5.0-rc1, July 2024

10 R1, October 2018

6.0, Septermber 2022

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

AGPL v3

commercial

Open Source

Mozilla public license

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

Python

C++

Server operating systems

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux

hosted

Linux
macOS

Linux
macOS
Windows

Data scheme

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.

yes

XML type, but no XML query functionality

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)

yes

distributed, parallel query execution

APIs and other access methods

Proprietary protocol

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

CLI Client
RESTful HTTP API

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

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

RESTful HTTP API
SPARQL 1.1

Supported programming languages

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Python
Ruby

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

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

C
Java

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

limited functionality with using 'rules'

user defined functions

Triggers

yes

Callbacks are triggered when data changes

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

Sharding

horizontal partitioning

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

selectable replication factor

replication via a shared file system

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

Eventual Consistency

if the client is offline
Immediate Consistency

if the client is online

Immediate Consistency

Immediate Consistency in stand-alone mode, Eventual Consistency in replicated setups

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

yes

ACID

MVCC

ACID

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.

yes

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users can be defined per object

yes

yes, based on authentication and database rules

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Roles, resources, and access types

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.
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Licensing and pricing models

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