DBMS > Cassandra vs. Datastax Enterprise vs. FileMaker vs. FoundationDB vs. YugabyteDB

System Properties Comparison Cassandra vs. Datastax Enterprise vs. FileMaker vs. FoundationDB vs. YugabyteDB

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Created as commercial project in 2013, FoundationDB has been acquired by Apple in March 2015 and was withdrawn from the market.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.

FileMaker is a cross-platform RDBMS that includes a GUI frontend.

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

High-performance distributed SQL database for global, internet-scale applications. Wire and feature compatible with PostgreSQL.

Primary database model

Wide column store

Relational DBMS

Document store

supported via specific layer
Key-value store
Relational DBMS

supported via specific SQL-layer

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS
Search engine
Vector DBMS

Document store
Wide column store

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	48.20
Rank	#20	Overall
	#14	Relational DBMS

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

Score	2.91
Rank	#102	Overall
	#51	Relational DBMS

Website

cassandra.apache.org

www.datastax.com/products/datastax-enterprise

www.claris.com/filemaker

github.com/apple/foundationdb

www.yugabyte.com

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

docs.datastax.com

www.claris.com/resources/documentation

apple.github.io/foundationdb

docs.yugabyte.com
github.com/yugabyte/yugabyte-db

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

DataStax

Claris

a subsidiary of Apple

FoundationDB

Yugabyte Inc.

Initial release

2008

2011

1983

2013

2017

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

6.8, April 2020

19.4.1, November 2021

6.2.28, November 2020

2.19, September 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

commercial

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

Apache 2.0

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.

Datastax Astra DB: Astra DB simplifies cloud-native Cassandra application development for your apps, microservices and functions. Deploy in minutes on AWS, Google Cloud, Azure, and have it managed for you by the experts, with serverless, pay-as-you-go pricing.

YugabyteDB Managed is the fully managed database-as-a-service offering of YugabyteDB. Get started quickly, and effortlessly ensure continuous availability and limitless scale of your cloud native applications.

Implementation language

Java

C++

C and C++

Server operating systems

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
OS X

iOS

client part only
Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
OS X

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free

some layers support schemas

depending on used data model

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

some layers support typing

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

A http query request can return the data in XML format

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

yes

via plugins

supported in specific SQL layer only

yes, PostgreSQL compatible

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

Filemaker WebDirect
JDBC
ODBC

JDBC
YCQL, an SQL-based flexible-schema API with its roots in Cassandra Query Language
YSQL - a fully relational SQL API that is wire compatible with the SQL language in PostgreSQL

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

PHP

.Net
C
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
PHP
Python
Ruby
Swift

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

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

in SQL-layer only

yes

sql, plpgsql, C

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

none

Sharding

Hash and Range Sharding, row-level geo-partitioning

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

Source-replica replication, warm standby

since Version 14

yes

Based on Raft distributed consensus protocol, minimum 3 replicas for continuous availability

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

Linearizable consistency

Strong consistency on writes and tunable consistency on reads

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

in SQL-layer only

yes

Transaction concepts

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

Atomicity and isolation are supported for single operations

ACID

Distributed ACID with Serializable & Snapshot Isolation. Inspired by Google Spanner architecture.

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

based on RocksDB

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

simple rights management via user accounts and connection to external directory services

yes

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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YugabyteDB is an open source distributed SQL database for cloud native transactional...
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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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PostgreSQL compatible: Get instantly productive with a PostgreSQL compatible RDBMS....
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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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Systems of record and engagement for cloud native applications that require resilience,...
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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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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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2 Million+ lifetime clusters deployed, 6.5K+ GitHub stars, 7K YugabyteDB 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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Apache 2.0 license for the database
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