DBMS > Cassandra vs. Citus vs. HarperDB vs. MySQL vs. PostGIS

System Properties Comparison Cassandra vs. Citus vs. HarperDB vs. MySQL vs. PostGIS

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

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

Ultra-low latency distributed database with an intuitive REST API supporting NoSQL and SQL (including joins). Deployment of functions and databases simultaneously with a consolidated node-level architecture.

Widely used open source RDBMS

Spatial extension of PostgreSQL

Primary database model

Key/Value like access via memcached API

Spatial DBMS

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

Document store

Document store
Spatial DBMS

Relational DBMS

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

Score	98.83
Rank	#12	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	2.15
Rank	#117	Overall
	#56	Relational DBMS

Score	0.60
Rank	#244	Overall
	#38	Document stores

Score	1061.34
Rank	#2	Overall
	#2	Relational DBMS

Score	21.72
Rank	#29	Overall
	#1	Spatial DBMS

Website

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

docs.citusdata.com

docs.harperdb.io/docs

dev.mysql.com/doc

postgis.net/documentation

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

HarperDB

Oracle

since 2010, originally MySQL AB, then Sun

Initial release

2008

2010

2017

1995

2005

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

8.1, December 2018

3.1, August 2021

8.4.0, April 2024

3.4.2, February 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

AGPL, commercial license also available

commercial

free community edition available

Open Source

GPL version 2. Commercial licenses with extended functionallity are available

Open Source

GPL v2.0

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.

Aiven for MySQL: Fully managed MySQL, deployable in the cloud of your choice, with seamless integrations and lightning-fast setup.

Implementation language

Java

Node.js

C and C++

Server operating systems

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux

Linux
OS X

FreeBSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

dynamic schema

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

JSON data types

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

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

standard, with numerous extensions

SQL-like data manipulation statements

yes

with proprietary extensions

yes

APIs and other access methods

Proprietary protocol

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

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

JDBC
ODBC
React Hooks
RESTful HTTP/JSON API
WebSocket

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary native API

Supported programming languages

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#
C++
ColdFusion
D
Dart
Delphi
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Lisp
MatLab
Objective C
Perl
PHP
PowerShell
Prolog
Python
R
Ruby
Rust
Scala
Swift

Ada
C
C#
C++
D
Delphi
Eiffel
Erlang
Haskell
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

user defined functions

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

Custom Functions

since release 3.1

yes

proprietary syntax

user defined functions

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

Sharding

A table resides as a whole on one (or more) nodes in a cluster

horizontal partitioning, sharding with MySQL Cluster or MySQL Fabric

yes

based on PostgreSQL

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

Source-replica replication

other methods possible by using 3rd party extensions

yes

the nodes on which a table resides can be defined

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

yes

based on PostgreSQL

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

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

not for MyISAM storage engine

yes

Transaction concepts

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

Atomicity and isolation are supported for single operations

ACID

Atomic execution of specific operations

ACID

not for MyISAM storage engine

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

table locks or row locks depending on storage engine

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

yes, using LMDB

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

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Access rights for users and roles

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

no user groups or roles

yes

based on PostgreSQL

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Apache Cassandra is the leading NoSQL, distributed database management system, well...
» more

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

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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