DBMS > Cassandra vs. Couchbase vs. Elasticsearch vs. Google Cloud Bigtable vs. HBase

System Properties Comparison Cassandra vs. Couchbase vs. Elasticsearch vs. Google Cloud Bigtable vs. HBase

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

A distributed, RESTful modern search and analytics engine based on Apache Lucene

Elasticsearch lets you perform and combine many types of searches such as structured, unstructured, geo, and metric

Google's NoSQL Big Data database service. It's the same database that powers many core Google services, including Search, Analytics, Maps, and Gmail.

Wide-column store based on Apache Hadoop and on concepts of BigTable

Primary database model

Wide column store

Document store

Search engine

Key-value store
Wide column store

Wide column store

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

Document store
Spatial DBMS
Vector DBMS

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

Score	98.83
Rank	#12	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	16.59
Rank	#36	Overall
	#5	Document stores

Score	132.83
Rank	#7	Overall
	#1	Search engines

Score	3.15
Rank	#95	Overall
	#14	Key-value stores
	#8	Wide column stores

Score	27.97
Rank	#26	Overall
	#2	Wide column stores

Website

cassandra.apache.org

www.couchbase.com

www.elastic.co/elasticsearch

cloud.google.com/bigtable

hbase.apache.org

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

docs.couchbase.com

www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/index.html

cloud.google.com/bigtable/docs

hbase.apache.org/book.html

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Couchbase, Inc.

Elastic

Google

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top-level project, originally developed by Powerset

Initial release

2008

2011

2010

2015

2008

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

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

8.6, January 2023

2.3.4, January 2021

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

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

Open Source

Elastic License

commercial

Open Source

Apache version 2

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.

Implementation language

Java

C, C++, Go and Erlang

Java

Server operating systems

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
OS X
Windows

All OS with a Java VM

hosted

Linux
Unix
Windows

using Cygwin

Data scheme

schema-free

Flexible type definitions. Once a type is defined, it is persistent

schema-free

schema-free, schema definition possible

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

options to bring your own types, AVRO

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

All search fields are automatically indexed

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

SQL-like query language

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

Java API
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

gRPC (using protocol buffers) API
HappyBase (Python library)
HBase compatible API (Java)

Java API
RESTful HTTP API
Thrift

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
Groovy
Community Contributed Clients
Java
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

C#
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

C
C#
C++
Groovy
Java
PHP
Python
Scala

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

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

yes

Coprocessors in Java

Triggers

yes

via the TAP protocol

yes

by using the 'percolation' feature

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

Automatic Sharding

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

including cross data center replication
Source-replica replication

yes

Internal replication in Colossus, and regional replication between two clusters in different zones

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

ES-Hadoop Connector

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

Synchronous doc based replication. Get by ID may show delays up to 1 sec. Configurable write consistency: one, quorum, all

Immediate consistency (for a single cluster), Eventual consistency (for two or more replicated clusters)

Immediate Consistency or Eventual Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

Transaction concepts

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

Atomicity and isolation are supported for single operations

ACID

Atomic single-row operations

Single row ACID (across millions of columns)

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.

yes

Ephemeral buckets

Memcached and Redis integration

yes

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.

Access rights for users, groups and roles based on Google Cloud Identity and Access Management (IAM)

Access Control Lists (ACL) for RBAC, integration with Apache Ranger for RBAC & ABAC

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

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

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