DBMS > Cassandra vs. Couchbase vs. Google Cloud Spanner vs. JanusGraph vs. KairosDB

System Properties Comparison Cassandra vs. Couchbase vs. Google Cloud Spanner vs. JanusGraph vs. KairosDB

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 horizontally scalable, globally consistent, relational database service. It is the externalization of the core Google database that runs the biggest aspects of Google, like Ads and Google Play.

A Graph DBMS optimized for distributed clusters

It was forked from the latest code base of Titan in January 2017

Distributed Time Series DBMS based on Cassandra or H2

Primary database model

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

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	2.89
Rank	#103	Overall
	#52	Relational DBMS

Score	1.94
Rank	#129	Overall
	#12	Graph DBMS

Score	0.62
Rank	#239	Overall
	#20	Time Series DBMS

Website

cassandra.apache.org

www.couchbase.com

cloud.google.com/spanner

janusgraph.org

github.com/kairosdb/kairosdb

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

docs.couchbase.com

cloud.google.com/spanner/docs

docs.janusgraph.org

kairosdb.github.io

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Couchbase, Inc.

Google

Linux Foundation; originally developed as Titan by Aurelius

Initial release

2008

2011

2017

2013

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

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

0.6.3, February 2023

1.2.2, November 2018

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

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

commercial

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

Apache 2.0

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

hosted

Linux
OS X
Unix
Windows

Linux
OS X
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

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

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

Query statements complying to ANSI 2011

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

gRPC (using protocol buffers) API
JDBC

At present, JDBC supports read-only queries. No support for DDL or DML statements.
RESTful HTTP API

Java API
TinkerPop Blueprints
TinkerPop Frames
TinkerPop Gremlin
TinkerPop Rexster

Graphite protocol
HTTP REST
Telnet API

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

Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

Clojure
Java
Python

Java
JavaScript

Node.js
PHP
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

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

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

yes

depending on the used storage backend (e.g. Cassandra, HBase, BerkeleyDB)

Sharding

based on Cassandra

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

Multi-source replication with 3 replicas for regional instances.

yes

selectable replication factor

based on Cassandra

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

using Google Cloud Dataflow

yes

via Faunus, a graph analytics engine

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

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency

based on Cassandra
Immediate Consistency

based on Cassandra

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

by using interleaved tables, this features focuses more on performance improvements than on referential integrity

yes

Relationships in graphs

Transaction concepts

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

Atomicity and isolation are supported for single operations

ACID

Strict serializable isolation

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

Supports various storage backends: Cassandra, HBase, Berkeley DB, Akiban, Hazelcast

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.

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

User authentification and security via Rexster Graph Server

simple password-based access control

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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