DBMS > Apache Cassandra vs. CockroachDB vs. Riak KV

System Properties Comparison Apache Cassandra vs. CockroachDB vs. Riak KV

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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.

Distributed, fault tolerant key-value store

Primary database model

Wide column store

Relational DBMS

Key-value store

with links between data sets and object tags for the creation of secondary indexes

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

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

Score	99.13
Rank	#12	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	4.45
Rank	#66	Overall
	#36	Relational DBMS

Score	3.95
Rank	#73	Overall
	#9	Key-value stores

Website

cassandra.apache.org

www.cockroachlabs.com

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

www.cockroachlabs.com/docs

www.tiot.jp/riak-docs/riak/kv/latest

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Cockroach Labs

OpenSource, formerly Basho Technologies

Initial release

2008

2015

2009

Current release

5.0-rc1, July 2024

24.1.0, May 2024

3.2.0, December 2022

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

Apache 2.0, commercial license available

Open Source

Apache version 2, commercial enterprise edition

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.

Implementation language

Java

Erlang

Server operating systems

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
macOS
Windows

Linux
OS X

Data scheme

schema-free

dynamic schema

schema-free

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.

Secondary indexes

restricted

only equality queries, not always the best performing solution

yes

restricted

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like SELECT, DML and DDL statements (CQL)

yes, wire compatible with PostgreSQL

APIs and other access methods

Proprietary protocol

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

JDBC

HTTP API
Native Erlang Interface

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

unofficial client library
C#
C++

unofficial client library
Clojure

unofficial client library
Dart

unofficial client library
Erlang
Go

unofficial client library
Groovy

unofficial client library
Haskell

unofficial client library
Java
JavaScript

unofficial client library
Lisp

unofficial client library
Perl

unofficial client library
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

unofficial client library
Smalltalk

unofficial client library

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

Erlang

Triggers

yes

pre-commit hooks and post-commit hooks

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

no "single point of failure"

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

selectable replication factor

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

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

links between data sets can be stored

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

yes, using Riak Security

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.
» more

Licensing and pricing models

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