DBMS > Cassandra vs. Datastax Enterprise vs. Microsoft Azure AI Search vs. Sphinx

System Properties Comparison Cassandra vs. Datastax Enterprise vs. Microsoft Azure AI Search vs. Sphinx

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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

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.

Search-as-a-service for web and mobile app development

Open source search engine for searching in data from different sources, e.g. relational databases

Primary database model

Wide column store

Search engine

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS
Search engine
Vector 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	5.80
Rank	#60	Overall
	#4	Wide column stores

Score	5.59
Rank	#63	Overall
	#7	Search engines

Score	5.98
Rank	#56	Overall
	#5	Search engines

Website

cassandra.apache.org

www.datastax.com/products/datastax-enterprise

azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/search

sphinxsearch.com

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

docs.datastax.com

learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/search

sphinxsearch.com/docs

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

DataStax

Microsoft

Sphinx Technologies Inc.

Initial release

2008

2011

2015

2001

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

6.8, April 2020

3.5.1, February 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

commercial

Open Source

GPL version 2, commercial licence available

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

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++

Server operating systems

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
OS X

hosted

FreeBSD
Linux
NetBSD
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

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.

Secondary indexes

restricted

only equality queries, not always the best performing solution

yes

full-text index on all search fields

SQL

Support of SQL

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

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

SQL-like query language (SphinxQL)

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

RESTful HTTP API

Proprietary protocol

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

C#
Java
JavaScript
Python

C++

unofficial client library
Java
Perl

unofficial client library
PHP
Python
Ruby

unofficial client library

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

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

Implicit feature of the cloud service

Sharding

Partitioning is done manually, search queries against distributed index is supported

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

Implicit feature of the cloud service

none

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

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

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

The original contents of fields are not stored in the Sphinx index.

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

yes

using Azure authentication

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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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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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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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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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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