DBMS > Cassandra vs. Couchbase vs. MarkLogic vs. Riak KV vs. Vertica

System Properties Comparison Cassandra vs. Couchbase vs. MarkLogic vs. Riak KV vs. Vertica

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

Operational and transactional Enterprise NoSQL database

Distributed, fault tolerant key-value store

Cloud or off-cloud analytical database and query engine for structured and semi-structured streaming and batch data. Machine learning platform with built-in algorithms, data preparation capabilities, and model evaluation and management via SQL or Python.

Primary database model

Wide column store

Document store

Document store
Native XML DBMS
RDF store

as of version 7
Search engine

Key-value store

with links between data sets and object tags for the creation of secondary indexes

Relational DBMS

Column oriented

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

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

Score	4.10
Rank	#82	Overall
	#9	Key-value stores

Score	10.68
Rank	#43	Overall
	#27	Relational DBMS

Website

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

docs.couchbase.com

docs.marklogic.com

www.tiot.jp/riak-docs/riak/kv/latest

vertica.com/documentation

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Couchbase, Inc.

MarkLogic Corp.

OpenSource, formerly Basho Technologies

OpenText

previously Micro Focus and Hewlett Packard

Initial release

2008

2011

2001

2009

2005

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

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

11.0, December 2022

3.2.0, December 2022

12.0.3, January 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

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

commercial

restricted free version is available

Open Source

Apache version 2, commercial enterprise edition

commercial

Limited community edition free

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

on-premises, all major clouds - Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform and containers

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

C++

Erlang

C++

Server operating systems

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
OS X

Linux

Data scheme

schema-free

Schema can be enforced

schema-free

Yes, but also semi-structure/unstructured data storage, and complex hierarchical data (like Parquet) stored and/or queried.

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

Secondary indexes

restricted

only equality queries, not always the best performing solution

yes

restricted

No Indexes Required. Different internal optimization strategy, but same functionality included.

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

SQL92

Full 1999 standard plus machine learning, time series and geospatial. Over 650 functions.

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
Node.js Client API
ODBC
proprietary Optic API

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

HTTP API
Native Erlang Interface

ADO.NET
JDBC
Kafka Connector
ODBC
RESTful HTTP API
Spark Connector
vSQL

character-based, interactive, front-end utility

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

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

unofficial client library
C#
C++

unofficial client library
Clojure

unofficial client library
Dart

unofficial client library
Erlang
Go

unofficial client library
Groovy

unofficial client library
Haskell

unofficial client library
Java
JavaScript

unofficial client library
Lisp

unofficial client library
Perl

unofficial client library
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

unofficial client library
Smalltalk

unofficial client library

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

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

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

yes

via XQuery or JavaScript

Erlang

yes, PostgreSQL PL/pgSQL, with minor differences

Triggers

yes

via the TAP protocol

yes

pre-commit hooks and post-commit hooks

yes, called Custom Alerts

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

Automatic Sharding

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

horizontal partitioning, hierarchical partitioning

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

selectable replication factor

Multi-source replication

One, or more copies of data replicated across nodes, or object-store used for repository.

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

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

yes

Bi-directional Spark integration

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

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

links between data sets can be stored

yes

Transaction concepts

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

Atomicity and isolation are supported for single operations

ACID

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

ACID

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

yes, with Range Indexes

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.

Role-based access control at the document and subdocument levels

yes, using Riak Security

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard; supports Kerberos, LDAP, Ident and hash

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Apache Cassandra is the leading NoSQL, distributed database management system, well...
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Deploy-anywhere database for large-scale analytical deployments. Deploy off-cloud,...
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Competitive advantages

No single point of failure ensures 100% availability . Operational simplicity for...
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Fast, scalable, and capable of high concurrency. Separation of compute/storage leverages...
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Typical application scenarios

Internet of Things (IOT), fraud detection applications, recommendation engines, product...
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Communication and network analytics, Embedded analytics, Fraud monitoring and Risk...
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Key customers

Apple, Netflix, Uber, ING,, Intuit,Fidelity, NY Times, Outbrain, BazaarVoice, Best...
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Abiba Systems, Adform, adMarketplace, AmeriPride, Anritsu, AOL, Avito, Auckland Transport,...
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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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Cost-based models and subscription-based models are both available. One license is...
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