DBMS > Cassandra vs. Couchbase vs. etcd vs. HarperDB

System Properties Comparison Cassandra vs. Couchbase vs. etcd vs. HarperDB

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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

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

A distributed reliable key-value store

Ultra-low latency distributed database with an intuitive REST API supporting NoSQL and SQL (including joins). Deployment of functions and databases simultaneously with a consolidated node-level architecture.

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	7.25
Rank	#54	Overall
	#5	Key-value stores

Score	0.55
Rank	#248	Overall
	#38	Document stores

Website

cassandra.apache.org

www.couchbase.com

etcd.io
github.com/etcd-io/etcd

www.harperdb.io

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

docs.couchbase.com

etcd.io/docs
github.com/etcd-io/etcd/tree/master/Documentation

docs.harperdb.io/docs

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Couchbase, Inc.

HarperDB

Initial release

2008

2011

2017

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

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

3.4, August 2019

3.1, August 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

Apache Version 2.0

commercial

free community edition 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.

Implementation language

Java

C, C++, Go and Erlang

Node.js

Server operating systems

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
OS X
Windows

FreeBSD
Linux
Windows

experimental

Linux
OS X

Data scheme

schema-free

dynamic schema

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

JSON 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.

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

SQL-like data manipulation statements

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
JSON over HTTP

JDBC
ODBC
React Hooks
RESTful HTTP/JSON API
WebSocket

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
C
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Rust
Scala
Tcl

.Net
C
C#
C++
ColdFusion
D
Dart
Delphi
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Lisp
MatLab
Objective C
Perl
PHP
PowerShell
Prolog
Python
R
Ruby
Rust
Scala
Swift

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

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

Custom Functions

since release 3.1

Triggers

yes

via the TAP protocol

yes, watching key changes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

Automatic Sharding

A table resides as a whole on one (or more) nodes in a cluster

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

Using Raft consensus algorithm to ensure data replication with strong consistency among multiple replicas.

yes

the nodes on which a table resides can be defined

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

Immediate 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 execution of specific operations

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

yes, using LMDB

In-memory capabilities

Is there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.

yes

Ephemeral buckets

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 and roles

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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