DBMS > Cassandra vs. CockroachDB vs. FoundationDB

System Properties Comparison Cassandra vs. CockroachDB vs. FoundationDB

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Created as commercial project in 2013, FoundationDB has been acquired by Apple in March 2015 and was withdrawn from the market. As a consequence, the product was removed from the DB-Engines ranking. In April 2018, Apple open-sourced FoundationDB and it therefore reappears in the ranking.

Description

Wide-column store based on ideas of BigTable and DynamoDB

Optimized for write access

CockroachDB is a distributed database architected for modern cloud applications. It is wire compatible with PostgreSQL and backed by a Key-Value Store, which is either RocksDB or a purpose-built derivative, called Pebble.

Ordered key-value store. Core features are complimented by layers.

Primary database model

Wide column store

Relational DBMS

Document store

supported via specific layer
Key-value store
Relational DBMS

supported via specific SQL-layer

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

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

Score	103.86
Rank	#12	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	6.10
Rank	#58	Overall
	#33	Relational DBMS

Score	1.07
Rank	#188	Overall
	#31	Document stores
	#28	Key-value stores
	#86	Relational DBMS

Website

cassandra.apache.org

www.cockroachlabs.com

github.com/apple/foundationdb

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

www.cockroachlabs.com/docs

apple.github.io/foundationdb

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Cockroach Labs

FoundationDB

Initial release

2008

2015

2013

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

23.1.1, May 2023

6.2.28, November 2020

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

Apache 2.0, commercial license available

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.

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Implementation language

Java

C++

Server operating systems

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
macOS
Windows

Linux
OS X
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

dynamic schema

schema-free

some layers support schemas

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

some layers support typing

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)

yes, wire compatible with PostgreSQL

supported in specific SQL layer only

APIs and other access methods

Proprietary protocol

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

JDBC

Supported programming languages

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

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

.Net
C
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
PHP
Python
Ruby
Swift

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

in SQL-layer only

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

horizontal partitioning (by key range)

all tables are translated to an ordered KV store and then broken down into 64MB ranges, which are then used as replicas in RAFT

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

Multi-source replication using RAFT

yes

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

Linearizable consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

in SQL-layer only

Transaction concepts

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

Atomicity and isolation are supported for single operations

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

In-memory capabilities

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

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users can be defined per object

Role-based access control

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Apache Cassandra is the leading NoSQL, distributed database management system, well...
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CockroachDB is a cloud-native, distributed SQL database architected for modern applications....
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Competitive advantages

No single point of failure ensures 100% availability . Operational simplicity for...
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- EFFORTLESS SCALE: Scale your applications, not operational complexity. CockroachDB...
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Typical application scenarios

Internet of Things (IOT), fraud detection applications, recommendation engines, product...
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Payment processing, user account management, metadata management, identity access...
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Key customers

Apple, Netflix, Uber, ING,, Intuit,Fidelity, NY Times, Outbrain, BazaarVoice, Best...
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Comcast, DoorDash, Mythical Games, Norfolk Southern, Netflix, LUSH, Bose, Shipt,...
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Market metrics

Cassandra is used by 40% of the Fortune 100.
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12K+ long-running clusters 25K+ CockroachDB self-hosted clusters 75K+ CockroachDB...
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Licensing and pricing models

Apache licenseÂ Pricing for commercial distributions provided by DataStax and available...
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- Apache 2.0 for core features released up to and including the 19.1 release - Time-limited...
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