DBMS > Cassandra vs. Datomic vs. Google Cloud Spanner vs. NCache vs. Sphinx

System Properties Comparison Cassandra vs. Datomic vs. Google Cloud Spanner vs. NCache vs. Sphinx

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Wide-column store based on ideas of BigTable and DynamoDB

Optimized for write access

Datomic builds on immutable values, supports point-in-time queries and uses 3rd party systems for durability

A horizontally scalable, globally consistent, relational database service. It is the externalization of the core Google database that runs the biggest aspects of Google, like Ads and Google Play.

Open-Source and Enterprise in-memory Key-Value Store

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

Primary database model

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

Document store
Search engine

Using distributed Lucene

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

Score	98.83
Rank	#12	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	1.66
Rank	#144	Overall
	#66	Relational DBMS

Score	2.84
Rank	#100	Overall
	#51	Relational DBMS

Score	0.96
Rank	#195	Overall
	#29	Key-value stores

Score	5.95
Rank	#55	Overall
	#5	Search engines

Website

cassandra.apache.org

www.datomic.com

cloud.google.com/spanner

www.alachisoft.com/ncache

sphinxsearch.com

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

docs.datomic.com

cloud.google.com/spanner/docs

www.alachisoft.com/resources/docs

sphinxsearch.com/docs

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Cognitect

Google

Alachisoft

Sphinx Technologies Inc.

Initial release

2008

2012

2017

2005

2001

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

1.0.7075, December 2023

5.3.3, April 2024

3.5.1, February 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

commercial

limited edition free

commercial

Open Source

Enterprise Edition available

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.

Implementation language

Java

Java, Clojure

C#, .NET, .NET Core, Java

C++

Server operating systems

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

All OS with a Java VM

hosted

Linux
Windows

FreeBSD
Linux
NetBSD
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

partial

Supported data types are Lists, Queues, Hashsets, Dictionary and Counter

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)

yes

Query statements complying to ANSI 2011

SQL-like query syntax and LINQ for searching the cache. Cache Synchronization with SQL Server using SQL dependency.

SQL-like query language (SphinxQL)

APIs and other access methods

Proprietary protocol

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

RESTful HTTP API

gRPC (using protocol buffers) API
JDBC

At present, JDBC supports read-only queries. No support for DDL or DML statements.
RESTful HTTP API

IDistributedCache
JCache
LINQ
Proprietary native API

Proprietary protocol

Supported programming languages

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

Clojure
Java

Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

.Net
.Net Core
C#
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python
Scala

C++

unofficial client library
Java
Perl

unofficial client library
PHP
Python
Ruby

unofficial client library

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

Transaction Functions

support for stored procedures with SQL-Server CLR

Triggers

yes

By using transaction functions

yes

Notifications

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

none

But extensive use of caching in the application peers

Sharding

yes

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

none

But extensive use of caching in the application peers

Multi-source replication with 3 replicas for regional instances.

yes, with selectable consistency level

none

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

using Google Cloud Dataflow

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

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency
Strong Eventual Consistency over WAN with Conflict Resolution using Bridge Topology

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

by using interleaved tables, this features focuses more on performance improvements than on referential integrity

Transaction concepts

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

Atomicity and isolation are supported for single operations

ACID

Strict serializable isolation

optimistic locking and pessimistic locking

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

using external storage systems (e.g. Cassandra, DynamoDB, PostgreSQL, Couchbase and others)

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

recommended only for testing and development

yes

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users can be defined per object

Access rights for users, groups and roles based on Google Cloud Identity and Access Management (IAM)

Authentication to access the cache via Active Directory/LDAP (possible roles: user, administrator)

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Apache Cassandra is the leading NoSQL, distributed database management system, well...
» more

NCache has been the market leader in .NET Distributed Caching since 2005 . NCache...
» more

Competitive advantages

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

NCache is 100% .NET/ .NET Core based which fully supports ASP.NET Core Sessions ,...
» more

Typical application scenarios

Internet of Things (IOT), fraud detection applications, recommendation engines, product...
» more

NCache enables industries like retail, finance, banking IoT, travel, ecommerce, healthcare...
» more

Key customers

Apple, Netflix, Uber, ING,, Intuit,Fidelity, NY Times, Outbrain, BazaarVoice, Best...
» more

Bank of America, Citi, Natures Way, Charter Spectrum, Barclays, Henry Schein, GBM,...
» more

Market metrics

Cassandra is used by 40% of the Fortune 100.
» more

Market Leader in .NET Distributed Caching since 2005.
» more

Licensing and pricing models

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

NCache Open Source is free on an as-is basis without any support. NCache Enterprise...
» more

News

An Introduction to David Jones-Gilardi, Developer Relations
11 June 2024

Introducing Tejas Kumar, Developer Relations Engineer
7 June 2024

Indexing All of Wikipedia on a Laptop
5 June 2024

An Introduction to Phil Nash, Developer Relations
3 June 2024

Focus on Creativity, Not Clusters: DataStax Mission Control in Action!
30 May 2024

We invite representatives of system vendors to contact us for updating and extending the system information,
and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.