DBMS > Cassandra vs. CockroachDB vs. MariaDB vs. Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs. Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics

System Properties Comparison Cassandra vs. CockroachDB vs. MariaDB vs. Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs. Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

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.

MySQL application compatible open source RDBMS, enhanced with high availability, security, interoperability and performance capabilities. MariaDB ColumnStore provides a column-oriented storage engine and MariaDB Xpand supports distributed SQL.

Database as a Service offering with high compatibility to Microsoft SQL Server

Elastic, large scale data warehouse service leveraging the broad eco-system of SQL Server

Primary database model

Wide column store

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

Document store
Graph DBMS

with OQGraph storage engine
Spatial DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	98.83
Rank	#12	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	5.73
Rank	#58	Overall
	#34	Relational DBMS

Score	91.04
Rank	#13	Overall
	#9	Relational DBMS

Score	76.78
Rank	#16	Overall
	#11	Relational DBMS

Score	19.93
Rank	#31	Overall
	#19	Relational DBMS

Website

cassandra.apache.org

www.cockroachlabs.com

mariadb.com

Site of MariaDB Corporation
mariadb.org

Site of MariaDB Foundation

azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/azure-sql/database

azure.microsoft.com/services/synapse-analytics

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

www.cockroachlabs.com/docs

mariadb.com/kb/en/library

docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-sql

docs.microsoft.com/azure/synapse-analytics

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Cockroach Labs

MariaDB Corporation Ab (MariaDB Enterprise),
MariaDB Foundation (community MariaDB Server)

The lead developer Monty Widenius is the original author of MySQL

Microsoft

Initial release

2008

2015

2009

Fork of MySQL, which was first released in 1995

2010

2016

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

24.1.0, May 2024

11.3.2, February 2024

V12

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

Apache 2.0, commercial license available

Open Source

GPL version 2, commercial enterprise subscription available

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.

STACKIT MariaDB offers MariaDB in a fully managed version in enterprise grade, 100% GDPR-compliant.

Implementation language

Java

C and C++

C++

Server operating systems

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
macOS
Windows

FreeBSD
Linux
Solaris
Windows

ColumnStore storage engine not available on Windows

hosted

Data scheme

schema-free

dynamic schema

yes

Dynamic columns are supported

yes

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

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

yes

with proprietary extensions

yes

APIs and other access methods

Proprietary protocol

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

JDBC

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary native API

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC

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

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

.Net
C#
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby

C#
Java
PHP

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

PL/SQL compatibility added with version 10.3

Transact SQL

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

several options for horizontal partitioning and Sharding

Sharding, horizontal partitioning

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

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

yes, with always 3 replicas available

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

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

not for MyISAM storage engine

yes

docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/synapse-analytics/sql-data-warehouse/sql-data-warehouse-table-constraints

Transaction concepts

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

Atomicity and isolation are supported for single operations

ACID

not for MyISAM storage engine

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

not for in-memory storage engine

yes

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

with MEMORY storage engine

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users can be defined per object

Role-based access control

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

yes

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Apache Cassandra is the leading NoSQL, distributed database management system, well...
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MariaDB is the most powerful open source relational database – modern SQL and JSON...
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Competitive advantages

No single point of failure ensures 100% availability . Operational simplicity for...
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MariaDB Servers have many features unavailable in other open source relational databases....
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Typical application scenarios

Internet of Things (IOT), fraud detection applications, recommendation engines, product...
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Web, SaaS and Cloud operational applications that require high availability, scalability...
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Key customers

Apple, Netflix, Uber, ING,, Intuit,Fidelity, NY Times, Outbrain, BazaarVoice, Best...
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Deutsche Bank, DBS Bank, Nasdaq, Red Hat, ServiceNow, Verizon and Walgreens Featured...
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Market metrics

Cassandra is used by 40% of the Fortune 100.
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MariaDB is the default database in the LAMP stack supplied by Red Hat and SUSE Linux,...
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Licensing and pricing models

Apache licenseÂ Pricing for commercial distributions provided by DataStax and available...
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MariaDB plc subscriptions cover our free, open source database, Community Server,...
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