DBMS > Cassandra vs. Datomic vs. GridDB vs. TimescaleDB vs. Trafodion

System Properties Comparison Cassandra vs. Datomic vs. GridDB vs. TimescaleDB vs. Trafodion

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Apache Trafodion has been retired in 2021. Therefore it is excluded from the DB-Engines Ranking.

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

Scalable in-memory time series database optimized for IoT and Big Data

A time series DBMS optimized for fast ingest and complex queries, based on PostgreSQL

Transactional SQL-on-Hadoop DBMS

Primary database model

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

Key-value store
Relational DBMS

Relational DBMS

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

Score	101.89
Rank	#12	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	1.59
Rank	#150	Overall
	#69	Relational DBMS

Score	1.95
Rank	#128	Overall
	#10	Time Series DBMS

Score	4.64
Rank	#71	Overall
	#4	Time Series DBMS

Website

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

docs.datomic.com

docs.griddb.net

docs.timescale.com

trafodion.apache.org/documentation.html

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Cognitect

Toshiba Corporation

Timescale

Apache Software Foundation, originally developed by HP

Initial release

2008

2012

2013

2017

2014

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

1.0.6735, June 2023

5.1, August 2022

2.15.0, May 2024

2.3.0, February 2019

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

commercial

limited edition free

Open Source

AGPL version 3 and Apache License, version 2.0 , commercial license (standard and advanced editions) also available

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.

Implementation language

Java

Java, Clojure

C++

C++, Java

Server operating systems

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

All OS with a Java VM

Linux

Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

numerical, string, blob, geometry, boolean, timestamp

numerics, strings, booleans, arrays, JSON blobs, geospatial dimensions, currencies, binary data, other complex data types

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

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)

SQL92, SQL-like TQL (Toshiba Query Language)

yes

full PostgreSQL SQL syntax

yes

APIs and other access methods

Proprietary protocol

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

RESTful HTTP API

JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary protocol
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

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

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC

Supported programming languages

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

Clojure
Java

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

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java

JDBC
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl

All languages supporting JDBC/ODBC/ADO.Net

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

Transaction Functions

user defined functions, PL/pgSQL, PL/Tcl, PL/Perl, PL/Python, PL/Java, PL/PHP, PL/R, PL/Ruby, PL/Scheme, PL/Unix shell

Java Stored Procedures

Triggers

yes

By using transaction functions

yes

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, across time and space (hash partitioning) attributes

Sharding

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

Source-replica replication

Source-replica replication with hot standby and reads on replicas

yes, via HBase

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

Connector for using GridDB as an input source and output destination for Hadoop MapReduce jobs

yes

via user defined functions and HBase

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

can be individually decided for each write operation

Immediate Consistency

Immediate consistency within container, eventual consistency across containers

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

Atomicity and isolation are supported for single operations

ACID

ACID at container level

ACID

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

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 can be defined per database

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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GridDB is a highly scalable, in-memory time series database optimized for IoT and...
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Competitive advantages

No single point of failure ensures 100% availability . Operational simplicity for...
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1. Optimized for IoT Equipped with Toshiba's proprietary key-container data model...
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Typical application scenarios

Internet of Things (IOT), fraud detection applications, recommendation engines, product...
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Factory IoT, Automative Industry, Energy, BEMS, Smart Community, Monitoring system.
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Key customers

Apple, Netflix, Uber, ING,, Intuit,Fidelity, NY Times, Outbrain, BazaarVoice, Best...
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Denso International [see use case ] An Electric Power company [see use case ] Ishinomaki...
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Market metrics

Cassandra is used by 40% of the Fortune 100.
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GitHub trending repository
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Licensing and pricing models

Apache licenseÂ Pricing for commercial distributions provided by DataStax and available...
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Open Source license (AGPL v3 & Apache v2) Commercial license (subscription)
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