DBMS > Cassandra vs. Datomic vs. IBM Db2 vs. InterSystems Caché vs. Microsoft Azure AI Search

System Properties Comparison Cassandra vs. Datomic vs. IBM Db2 vs. InterSystems Caché vs. Microsoft Azure AI Search

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Caché is a deprecated database engine which is substituted with InterSystems IRIS. It therefore is removed 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

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

A multi-model DBMS and application server

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

Primary database model

Wide column store

Relational DBMS

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

Key-value store
Object oriented DBMS
Relational DBMS

Search engine

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

Document store
RDF store

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

with Db2 Spatial Extender

Document store

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	1.59
Rank	#150	Overall
	#69	Relational DBMS

Score	128.46
Rank	#8	Overall
	#5	Relational DBMS

Score	5.59
Rank	#63	Overall
	#7	Search engines

Website

cassandra.apache.org

www.datomic.com

www.ibm.com/products/db2

www.intersystems.com/products/cache

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

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

docs.datomic.com

www.ibm.com/docs/en/db2

docs.intersystems.com

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

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Cognitect

IBM

InterSystems

Microsoft

Initial release

2008

2012

1983

host version

1997

2015

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

1.0.6735, June 2023

12.1, October 2016

2018.1.4, May 2020

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

commercial

limited edition free

commercial

free version is available

commercial

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 and C++

Server operating systems

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

All OS with a Java VM

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
Solaris
Windows
z/OS

AIX
HP Open VMS
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

hosted

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

depending on used data model

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.

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

ADO.NET
JDBC
JSON style queries

MongoDB compatible
ODBC
XQuery

.NET Client API
JDBC
ODBC
RESTful HTTP API

RESTful HTTP API

Supported programming languages

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

Clojure
Java

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

C#
C++
Java

C#
Java
JavaScript
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

Transaction Functions

yes

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

only with Windows/Unix/Linux Version

none

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

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

yes

with separate tools (MQ, InfoSphere)

Source-replica replication

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

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

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

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

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Access rights for users, groups and roles

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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Competitive advantages

No single point of failure ensures 100% availability . Operational simplicity for...
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Typical application scenarios

Internet of Things (IOT), fraud detection applications, recommendation engines, product...
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Key customers

Apple, Netflix, Uber, ING,, Intuit,Fidelity, NY Times, Outbrain, BazaarVoice, Best...
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Market metrics

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

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