DBMS > Cassandra vs. ClickHouse vs. Couchbase vs. FileMaker vs. RDF4J

System Properties Comparison Cassandra vs. ClickHouse vs. Couchbase vs. FileMaker vs. RDF4J

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Wide-column store based on ideas of BigTable and DynamoDB

Optimized for write access

A high-performance, column-oriented SQL DBMS for online analytical processing (OLAP) that uses all available system resources to their full potential to process each analytical query as fast as possible. It is available as both an open-source software and a cloud offering.

A distributed document store with integrated cache, a powerful search engine, in-built operational and analytical capabilities, and an embedded mobile database

FileMaker is a cross-platform RDBMS that includes a GUI frontend.

RDF4J is a Java framework for processing RDF data, supporting both memory-based and a disk-based storage.

Primary database model

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

Time Series DBMS

Key-value store

originating from the former Membase product and supporting the Memcached protocol
Spatial DBMS

using the Geocouch extension
Search engine
Time Series DBMS
Vector DBMS

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

Score	101.89
Rank	#12	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	16.34
Rank	#38	Overall
	#23	Relational DBMS

Score	17.30
Rank	#36	Overall
	#5	Document stores

Score	48.20
Rank	#20	Overall
	#14	Relational DBMS

Score	0.69
Rank	#230	Overall
	#9	RDF stores

Website

cassandra.apache.org

clickhouse.com

www.couchbase.com

www.claris.com/filemaker

rdf4j.org

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

clickhouse.com/docs

docs.couchbase.com

www.claris.com/resources/documentation

rdf4j.org/documentation

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Clickhouse Inc.

Couchbase, Inc.

Claris

a subsidiary of Apple

Since 2016 officially forked into an Eclipse project, former developer was Aduna Software.

Initial release

2008

2016

2011

1983

2004

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

v24.4.1.2088-stable, May 2024

Server: 7.2, June 2023; Mobile: 3.1, March 2022; Couchbase Capella (DBaaS), June 2023

19.4.1, November 2021

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

Business Source License (BSL 1.1); Commercial licenses also available

commercial

Open Source

Eclipse Distribution License (EDL), v1.0.

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.

ClickHouse Cloud: Get the performance you love from open source ClickHouse in a serverless offering that takes care of the details so you can spend more time getting insight out of the fastest database on earth.
Aiven for Clickhouse: Managed cloud data warehousing with high-speed analytics.
DoubleCloud: Fully managed ClickHouse alongside best-in-class managed open-source services to build analytics at scale.

Implementation language

Java

C++

C, C++, Go and Erlang

Java

Server operating systems

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

FreeBSD
Linux
macOS

Linux
OS X
Windows

iOS

client part only
Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
OS X
Unix
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

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

A http query request can return the data in XML format

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)

Close to ANSI SQL (SQL/JSON + extensions)

SQL++, extends ANSI SQL to JSON for operational, transactional, and analytic use cases

yes

via plugins

APIs and other access methods

Proprietary protocol

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

gRPC
HTTP REST
JDBC
MySQL wire protocol
ODBC
PostgreSQL wire protocol
Proprietary protocol

CLI Client
HTTP REST
Kafka Connector
Native language bindings for CRUD, Query, Search and Analytics APIs
Spark Connector
Spring Data

Filemaker WebDirect
JDBC
ODBC

Java API
RIO

RDF Input/Output
Sail API
SeRQL

Sesame RDF Query Language
Sesame REST HTTP Protocol
SPARQL

Supported programming languages

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

3rd party library
C++
Elixir

3rd party library
Go

3rd party library
Java

3rd party library
JavaScript (Node.js)

3rd party library
Kotlin

3rd party library
Nim

3rd party library
Perl

3rd party library
PHP

3rd party library
Python

3rd party library
R

3rd party library
Ruby

3rd party library
Rust
Scala

3rd party library

.Net
C
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Kotlin
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

PHP

Java
PHP
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

Functions and timers in JavaScript and UDFs in Java, Python, SQL++

yes

Triggers

yes

via the TAP protocol

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

key based and custom

Automatic Sharding

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

Asynchronous and synchronous physical replication; geographically distributed replicas; support for object storages.

Multi-source replication

including cross data center replication
Source-replica replication

Source-replica replication, warm standby

since Version 14

none

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
Immediate Consistency

selectable on a per-operation basis

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

Isolation support depends on the API used

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

in-memory storage is supported as well

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

Ephemeral buckets

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users can be defined per object

Access rights for users and roles. Column and row based policies. Quotas and resource limits. Pluggable authentication with LDAP and Kerberos. Password based, X.509 certificate, and SSH key authentication.

User and Administrator separation with password-based and LDAP integrated Authentication. Role-base access control.

simple rights management via user accounts and connection to external directory services

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

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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