DBMS > Cassandra vs. Couchbase vs. CrateDB vs. EDB Postgres vs. IBM Db2

System Properties Comparison Cassandra vs. Couchbase vs. CrateDB vs. EDB Postgres vs. IBM Db2

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Wide-column store based on ideas of BigTable and DynamoDB

Optimized for write access

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

Distributed Database based on Lucene

The EDB Postgres Platform is an enterprise-class data management platform based on the open source database PostgreSQL with flexible deployment options and Oracle compatibility features, complemented by tool kits for management, integration, and migration.

Common in IBM host environments, 2 different versions for host and Windows/Linux

Primary database model

Wide column store

Document store

Document store
Spatial DBMS
Search engine
Time Series DBMS
Vector DBMS

Relational DBMS

Since Version 10.5 support for JSON/BSON documents compatible with MongoDB

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

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

Relational DBMS

Document store
Spatial DBMS

Document store
RDF store

in Db2 LUW (Linux, Unix, Windows)
Spatial DBMS

with Db2 Spatial Extender

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

Score	101.89
Rank	#12	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	17.30
Rank	#36	Overall
	#5	Document stores

Score	0.73
Rank	#224	Overall
	#37	Document stores
	#5	Spatial DBMS
	#16	Search engines
	#19	Time Series DBMS
	#8	Vector DBMS

Score	1.90
Rank	#135	Overall
	#63	Relational DBMS

Score	128.46
Rank	#8	Overall
	#5	Relational DBMS

Website

www.ibm.com/products/db2

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

docs.couchbase.com

cratedb.com/docs

www.enterprisedb.com/docs

www.ibm.com/docs/en/db2

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Couchbase, Inc.

Crate

EnterpriseDB

IBM

Initial release

2008

2011

2013

2005

1983

host version

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

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

14, December 2021

12.1, October 2016

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

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

Open Source

commercial

BSD for PostgreSQL-components

commercial

free version is available

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.

CrateDB Cloud: a distributed SQL database that spreads data and processing across an elastic cluster of shared nothing nodes. CrateDB Cloud enables data insights at scale on Microsoft Azure, AWS and Google Cloud Platform.

Implementation language

Java

C, C++, Go and Erlang

Java

C and C++

Server operating systems

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
OS X
Windows

All Operating Systems, including Kubernetes with CrateDB Kubernetes Operator support

Linux
Windows

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
Solaris
Windows
z/OS

Data scheme

schema-free

Flexible Schema (defined schema, partial schema, schema free)

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

specific XML-type available, but no XML query functionality.

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)

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

yes, but no triggers and constraints, and PostgreSQL compatibility

yes

standard with numerous extensions

yes

APIs and other access methods

Proprietary protocol

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

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

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
PostgreSQL wire protocol
Prometheus Remote Read/Write
RESTful HTTP API

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

ADO.NET
JDBC
JSON style queries

MongoDB compatible
ODBC
XQuery

Supported programming languages

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

.Net
C
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Kotlin
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

.NET
Erlang
Go

community maintained client
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)

community maintained client
Perl

community maintained client
PHP
Python
R
Ruby

community maintained client
Scala

community maintained client

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java
Perl
PHP
Python
Tcl

C
C#
C++
Cobol
Delphi
Fortran
Java
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Visual Basic

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

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

user defined functions (Javascript)

user defined functions

realized in proprietary language PL/pgSQL or with common languages like Perl, Python, Tcl etc.

yes

Triggers

yes

via the TAP protocol

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

Automatic Sharding

Sharding

horizontal partitioning

by hash, list or range

Sharding

only with Windows/Unix/Linux Version

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

Multi-source replication

including cross data center replication
Source-replica replication

Configurable replication on table/partition-level

Multi-source replication

yes

with separate tools (MQ, InfoSphere)

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

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

selectable on a per-operation basis

Eventual Consistency
Read-after-write consistency on record level

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

ACID

unique row identifiers can be used for implementing an optimistic concurrency control strategy

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

yes, multi-version concurrency control (MVCC)

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

Ephemeral buckets

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users can be defined per object

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

rights management via user accounts

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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The enterprise database for time series, documents, and vectors. Distributed - Native...
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Competitive advantages

No single point of failure ensures 100% availability . Operational simplicity for...
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Response time in milliseconds: e ven for complex ad-hoc queries. Massive scaling...
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Typical application scenarios

Internet of Things (IOT), fraud detection applications, recommendation engines, product...
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IoT: accelerate your IIoT projects with CrateDB, delivering real-time analytics...
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Key customers

Apple, Netflix, Uber, ING,, Intuit,Fidelity, NY Times, Outbrain, BazaarVoice, Best...
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Across all continents, CrateDB is used by companies of all sizes to meet the most...
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Market metrics

Cassandra is used by 40% of the Fortune 100.
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The CrateDB open source project was started in 2013 Honorable Mention in 2021 Gartner®...
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Licensing and pricing models

Apache licenseÂ Pricing for commercial distributions provided by DataStax and available...
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See CrateDB pricing >
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