DBMS > Cassandra vs. Datastax Enterprise vs. EDB Postgres vs. FoundationDB vs. Weaviate

System Properties Comparison Cassandra vs. Datastax Enterprise vs. EDB Postgres vs. FoundationDB vs. Weaviate

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Created as commercial project in 2013, FoundationDB has been acquired by Apple in March 2015 and was withdrawn from the market. As a consequence, the product was removed from the DB-Engines ranking. In April 2018, Apple open-sourced FoundationDB and it therefore reappears in the ranking.

Description

Wide-column store based on ideas of BigTable and DynamoDB

Optimized for write access

DataStax Enterprise (DSE) is the always-on, scalable data platform built on Apache Cassandra and designed for hybrid Cloud. DSE integrates graph, search, analytics, administration, developer tooling, and monitoring into a unified platform.

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.

Ordered key-value store. Core features are complimented by layers.

An AI-native realtime vector database engine that integrates scalable machine learning models.

Primary database model

Wide column store

Relational DBMS

Document store

supported via specific layer
Key-value store
Relational DBMS

supported via specific SQL-layer

Vector DBMS

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS
Search engine
Vector DBMS

Document store
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	101.89
Rank	#12	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	5.80
Rank	#60	Overall
	#4	Wide column stores

Score	1.90
Rank	#135	Overall
	#63	Relational DBMS

Score	1.03
Rank	#190	Overall
	#31	Document stores
	#28	Key-value stores
	#89	Relational DBMS

Score	1.73
Rank	#143	Overall
	#5	Vector DBMS

Website

cassandra.apache.org

www.datastax.com/products/datastax-enterprise

www.enterprisedb.com

github.com/apple/foundationdb

github.com/weaviate/weaviate
weaviate.io

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

docs.datastax.com

www.enterprisedb.com/docs

apple.github.io/foundationdb

weaviate.io/developers/weaviate

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

DataStax

EnterpriseDB

FoundationDB

Weaviate B.V.

Initial release

2008

2011

2005

2013

2019

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

6.8, April 2020

14, December 2021

6.2.28, November 2020

1.19, May 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

commercial

BSD for PostgreSQL-components

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

commercial license available with Weaviate Enterprise

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.

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Implementation language

Java

C++

Server operating systems

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
OS X

Linux
Windows

Linux
OS X
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free

some layers support schemas

yes, maps to GraphQL interface

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

some layers support typing

yes

string, int, float, geo point, date, cross reference, fuzzy references

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

all data objects are indexed in a semantic vector space (the Contextionary), all primitive fields are indexed

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like SELECT, DML and DDL statements (CQL)

SQL-like DML and DDL statements (CQL); Spark SQL

yes

standard with numerous extensions

supported in specific SQL layer only

GraphQL is used as query language

APIs and other access methods

Proprietary protocol

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

Proprietary protocol

CQL (Cassandra Query Language)
TinkerPop Gremlin

with DSE Graph

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

GraphQL query language
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Supported programming languages

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

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

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

.Net
C
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
PHP
Python
Ruby
Swift

JavaScript / TypeScript
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

user defined functions

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

in SQL-layer only

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

horizontal partitioning

by hash, list or range

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

configurable replication factor, datacenter aware, advanced replication for edge computing

Multi-source replication

yes

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

Immediate Consistency
Tunable Consistency

consistency level can be individually decided with each write operation

Immediate Consistency

Linearizable consistency

Eventual Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

in SQL-layer only

Transaction concepts

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

Atomicity and isolation are supported for single operations

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

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users can be defined per object

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

API Keys
OpenID Connect Discovery

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Apache Cassandra is the leading NoSQL, distributed database management system, well...
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DataStax Enterprise is scale-out data infrastructure for enterprises that need to...
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Weaviate is an open source vector database that is robust, scalable, cloud-native,...
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Competitive advantages

No single point of failure ensures 100% availability . Operational simplicity for...
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Supporting the following application requirements: Zero downtime - Built on Apache...
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Flexible deployment - Free, open source or fully-managed cloud vector database service...
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Typical application scenarios

Internet of Things (IOT), fraud detection applications, recommendation engines, product...
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Applications that must be massively and linearly scalable with 100% uptime and able...
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As a database supporting the development of generative AI and semantic search applications...
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Key customers

Apple, Netflix, Uber, ING,, Intuit,Fidelity, NY Times, Outbrain, BazaarVoice, Best...
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Capital One, Cisco, Comcast, eBay, McDonald's, Microsoft, Safeway, Sony, UBS, and...
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All companies that have data.
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Market metrics

Cassandra is used by 40% of the Fortune 100.
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Among the Forbes 100 Most Innovative Companies, DataStax is trusted by 5 of the top...
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As of mid 2023: Over 2 million open source downloads 3500+ Weaviate Slack community...
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Licensing and pricing models

Apache licenseÂ Pricing for commercial distributions provided by DataStax and available...
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Annual subscription
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Weaviate is open-source, and free to use. Weaviate is also available as a fully managed...
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and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.