DBMS > Cassandra vs. Datastax Enterprise vs. FoundationDB vs. GraphDB vs. IBM Db2

System Properties Comparison Cassandra vs. Datastax Enterprise vs. FoundationDB vs. GraphDB vs. IBM Db2

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Created as commercial project in 2013, FoundationDB has been acquired by Apple in March 2015 and was withdrawn from the market.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

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

Enterprise-ready RDF and graph database with efficient reasoning, cluster and external index synchronization support. It supports also SQL JDBC access to Knowledge Graph and GraphQL over SPARQL.

Common in IBM host environments, 2 different versions for host and Windows/Linux

Primary database model

Wide column store

Document store

supported via specific layer
Key-value store
Relational DBMS

supported via specific SQL-layer

Graph DBMS
RDF store

Relational DBMS

Since Version 10.5 support for JSON/BSON documents compatible with MongoDB

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS
Search engine
Vector DBMS

Document store
RDF store

in Db2 LUW (Linux, Unix, Windows)
Spatial DBMS

with Db2 Spatial Extender

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

Score	3.32
Rank	#91	Overall
	#6	Graph DBMS
	#4	RDF stores

Score	128.46
Rank	#8	Overall
	#5	Relational DBMS

Website

cassandra.apache.org

www.datastax.com/products/datastax-enterprise

github.com/apple/foundationdb

www.ontotext.com

www.ibm.com/products/db2

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

docs.datastax.com

apple.github.io/foundationdb

graphdb.ontotext.com/documentation

www.ibm.com/docs/en/db2

Social network pages

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

DataStax

FoundationDB

Ontotext

IBM

Initial release

2008

2011

2013

2000

1983

host version

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

6.8, April 2020

6.2.28, November 2020

10.4, October 2023

12.1, October 2016

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

commercial

Open Source

Apache 2.0

commercial

Some plugins of GraphDB Workbench are open sourced

commercial

free version is 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.

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.

Implementation language

Java

C++

Java

C and C++

Server operating systems

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
OS X

Linux
OS X
Windows

All OS with a Java VM
Linux
OS X
Windows

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
Solaris
Windows
z/OS

Data scheme

schema-free

some layers support schemas

schema-free and OWL/RDFS-schema support; RDF shapes

yes

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.

Secondary indexes

restricted

only equality queries, not always the best performing solution

yes

yes, supports real-time synchronization and indexing in SOLR/Elastic search/Lucene and GeoSPARQL geometry data indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

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

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

supported in specific SQL layer only

stored SPARQL accessed as SQL using Apache Calcite through JDBC/ODBC

yes

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

GeoSPARQL
GraphQL
GraphQL Federation
Java API
JDBC
RDF4J API
RDFS
RIO
Sail API
Sesame REST HTTP Protocol
SPARQL 1.1

ADO.NET
JDBC
JSON style queries

MongoDB compatible
ODBC
XQuery

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++
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
PHP
Python
Ruby
Swift

.Net
C#
Clojure
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

C
C#
C++
Cobol
Delphi
Fortran
Java
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Visual Basic

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

in SQL-layer only

well-defined plugin interfaces; JavaScript server-side extensibility

yes

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

Sharding

none

Sharding

only with Windows/Unix/Linux Version

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

yes

Multi-source replication

yes

with separate tools (MQ, InfoSphere)

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

Immediate Consistency, Eventual consistency (configurable in cluster mode per master or individual client request)

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

in SQL-layer only

yes

Constraint checking

yes

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

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

Default Basic authentication through RDF4J client, or via Java when run with cURL, default token-based in the Workbench or via Rest API, optional access through OpenID or Kerberos single sign-on.

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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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Ontotext GraphDB is a semantic database engine that allows organizations to build...
» more

Competitive advantages

No single point of failure ensures 100% availability . Operational simplicity for...
» more

Supporting the following application requirements: Zero downtime - Built on Apache...
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GraphDB allows you to link text and data in big knowledge graphs. It’s easy to experiment...
» more

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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Metadata enrichment and management, linked data publishing, semantic inferencing...
» more

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...
» more

GraphDB provides a platform for building next-generation AI and Knowledge Graph...
» more

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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GraphDB is the most utilized semantic triplestore for mission-critical enterprise...
» more

Licensing and pricing models

Apache licenseÂ Pricing for commercial distributions provided by DataStax and available...
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Annual subscription
» more

GraphDB Free is a non-commercial version and is free to use. GraphDB Enterprise edition...
» more

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