DBMS > Cassandra vs. Datomic vs. HEAVY.AI vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. TinkerGraph

System Properties Comparison Cassandra vs. Datomic vs. HEAVY.AI vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. TinkerGraph

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 high performance, column-oriented RDBMS, specifically developed to harness the massive parallelism of modern CPU and GPU hardware

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

A lightweight, in-memory graph engine that serves as a reference implementation of the TinkerPop3 API

Primary database model

Wide column store

Relational DBMS

Graph DBMS

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

Spatial DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

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	1.64
Rank	#145	Overall
	#67	Relational DBMS

Score	821.56
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	0.13
Rank	#345	Overall
	#35	Graph DBMS

Website

cassandra.apache.org

www.datomic.com

github.com/heavyai/heavydb
www.heavy.ai

www.microsoft.com/en-us/sql-server

tinkerpop.apache.org/docs/current/reference/#tinkergraph-gremlin

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

docs.datomic.com

docs.heavy.ai

learn.microsoft.com/en-US/sql/sql-server

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Cognitect

HEAVY.AI, Inc.

Microsoft

Initial release

2008

2012

2016

1989

2009

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

1.0.7075, December 2023

5.10, January 2022

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

commercial

limited edition free

Open Source

Apache Version 2; enterprise edition available

commercial

restricted free version is available

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.

SQLServer Flex @ STACKIT offers a managed version of SQL Server with adjustable CPU, RAM, storage amount and speed, in enterprise grade to perfectly match all application requirements. All services are 100% GDPR-compliant.

Implementation language

Java

Java, Clojure

C++ and CUDA

C++

Java

Server operating systems

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

All OS with a Java VM

Linux

Linux
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free

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.

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)

yes

APIs and other access methods

Proprietary protocol

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

RESTful HTTP API

JDBC
ODBC
Thrift
Vega

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
OLE DB
Tabular Data Stream (TDS)

TinkerPop 3

Supported programming languages

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

Clojure
Java

All languages supporting JDBC/ODBC/Thrift
Python

C#
C++
Delphi
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Visual Basic

Groovy
Java

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

Transaction Functions

Transact SQL, .NET languages, R, Python and (with SQL Server 2019) Java

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

Round robin

tables can be distributed across several files (horizontal partitioning); sharding through federation

none

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

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

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

none

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Relationships in graphs

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

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

yes

optional

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

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...
» more

Competitive advantages

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

Typical application scenarios

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

Key customers

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

Market metrics

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

Licensing and pricing models

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