DBMS > Cassandra vs. CouchDB vs. GridDB vs. MarkLogic vs. TimescaleDB

System Properties Comparison Cassandra vs. CouchDB vs. GridDB vs. MarkLogic vs. TimescaleDB

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Wide-column store based on ideas of BigTable and DynamoDB

Optimized for write access

A native JSON - document store inspired by Lotus Notes, scalable from globally distributed server-clusters down to mobile phones.

Scalable in-memory time series database optimized for IoT and Big Data

Operational and transactional Enterprise NoSQL database

A time series DBMS optimized for fast ingest and complex queries, based on PostgreSQL

Primary database model

Wide column store

Document store

Time Series DBMS

Document store
Native XML DBMS
RDF store

as of version 7
Search engine

Time Series DBMS

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

Spatial DBMS

using the Geocouch extension

Key-value store
Relational DBMS

Relational DBMS

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

Score	101.89
Rank	#12	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	9.30
Rank	#45	Overall
	#7	Document stores

Score	1.95
Rank	#128	Overall
	#10	Time Series DBMS

Score	5.92
Rank	#58	Overall
	#10	Document stores
	#1	Native XML DBMS
	#1	RDF stores
	#6	Search engines

Score	4.64
Rank	#71	Overall
	#4	Time Series DBMS

Website

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

docs.couchdb.org/en/stable

docs.griddb.net

docs.marklogic.com

docs.timescale.com

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top-level project, originally developed by Damien Katz, a former Lotus Notes developer

Toshiba Corporation

MarkLogic Corp.

Timescale

Initial release

2008

2005

2013

2001

2017

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

3.3.3, December 2023

5.1, August 2022

11.0, December 2022

2.15.0, May 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

AGPL version 3 and Apache License, version 2.0 , commercial license (standard and advanced editions) also available

commercial

restricted free version is 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.

Astra DB: Multi-cloud DBaaS built on Apache Cassandra.

Implementation language

Java

Erlang

C++

Server operating systems

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

Android
BSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Linux

Linux
OS X
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free

Schema can be enforced

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

numerical, string, blob, geometry, boolean, timestamp

yes

numerics, strings, booleans, arrays, JSON blobs, geospatial dimensions, currencies, binary data, other complex data types

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

via views

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

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

SQL92, SQL-like TQL (Toshiba Query Language)

yes

SQL92

yes

full PostgreSQL SQL syntax

APIs and other access methods

Proprietary protocol

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

RESTful HTTP/JSON API

JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary protocol
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Java API
Node.js Client API
ODBC
proprietary Optic API

Proprietary Query API, introduced with version 9
RESTful HTTP API
SPARQL
WebDAV
XDBC
XQuery
XSLT

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

Supported programming languages

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

C
C#
ColdFusion
Erlang
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Lisp
Lua
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
PL/SQL
Python
Ruby
Smalltalk

C
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

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

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java

JDBC
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

View functions in JavaScript

yes

via XQuery or JavaScript

user defined functions, PL/pgSQL, PL/Tcl, PL/Perl, PL/Python, PL/Java, PL/PHP, PL/R, PL/Ruby, PL/Scheme, PL/Unix shell

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

Sharding

improved architecture with release 2.0

Sharding

yes, across time and space (hash partitioning) attributes

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

Source-replica replication

yes

Source-replica replication with hot standby and reads on replicas

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

Connector for using GridDB as an input source and output destination for Hadoop MapReduce jobs

yes

via Hadoop Connector, HDFS Direct Access and in-database MapReduce jobs

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

can be individually decided for each write operation

Eventual Consistency

Immediate consistency within container, eventual consistency across containers

Immediate Consistency

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

atomic operations within a single document possible

ACID at container level

ACID

can act as a resource manager in an XA/JTA transaction

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

strategy: optimistic locking

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.

yes

yes, with Range Indexes

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users can be defined per object

Access rights for users can be defined per database

Role-based access control at the document and subdocument levels

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Apache Cassandra is the leading NoSQL, distributed database management system, well...
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GridDB is a highly scalable, in-memory time series database optimized for IoT and...
» more

Competitive advantages

No single point of failure ensures 100% availability . Operational simplicity for...
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1. Optimized for IoT Equipped with Toshiba's proprietary key-container data model...
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Typical application scenarios

Internet of Things (IOT), fraud detection applications, recommendation engines, product...
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Factory IoT, Automative Industry, Energy, BEMS, Smart Community, Monitoring system.
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Key customers

Apple, Netflix, Uber, ING,, Intuit,Fidelity, NY Times, Outbrain, BazaarVoice, Best...
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Denso International [see use case ] An Electric Power company [see use case ] Ishinomaki...
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Market metrics

Cassandra is used by 40% of the Fortune 100.
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GitHub trending repository
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Licensing and pricing models

Apache licenseÂ Pricing for commercial distributions provided by DataStax and available...
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Open Source license (AGPL v3 & Apache v2) Commercial license (subscription)
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