DBMS > Cassandra vs. Datomic vs. IRONdb vs. RDF4J vs. RocksDB

System Properties Comparison Cassandra vs. Datomic vs. IRONdb vs. RDF4J vs. RocksDB

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

IRONdb seems to be discontinued. 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

A distributed Time Series DBMS with a focus on scalability, fault tolerance and operational simplicity

RDF4J is a Java framework for processing RDF data, supporting both memory-based and a disk-based storage.

Embeddable persistent key-value store optimized for fast storage (flash and RAM)

Primary database model

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

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	0.74
Rank	#222	Overall
	#9	RDF stores

Score	3.41
Rank	#86	Overall
	#11	Key-value stores

Website

cassandra.apache.org

www.datomic.com

www.circonus.com/solutions/time-series-database/

rdf4j.org

rocksdb.org

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

docs.datomic.com

docs.circonus.com/irondb/category/getting-started

rdf4j.org/documentation

github.com/facebook/rocksdb/wiki

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Cognitect

Circonus LLC.

Since 2016 officially forked into an Eclipse project, former developer was Aduna Software.

Facebook, Inc.

Initial release

2008

2012

2017

2004

2013

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

1.0.7075, December 2023

V0.10.20, January 2018

9.2.1, May 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

commercial

limited edition free

commercial

Open Source

Eclipse Distribution License (EDL), v1.0.

Open Source

BSD

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 and C++

Java

C++

Server operating systems

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

All OS with a Java VM

Linux

Linux
OS X
Unix
Windows

Linux

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free

yes

RDF Schemas

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

text, numeric, histograms

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

SQL

Support of SQL

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

SQL-like query language (Circonus Analytics Query Language: CAQL)

APIs and other access methods

Proprietary protocol

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

RESTful HTTP API

HTTP API

Java API
RIO

RDF Input/Output
Sail API
SeRQL

Sesame RDF Query Language
Sesame REST HTTP Protocol
SPARQL

C++ API
Java API

Supported programming languages

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

Clojure
Java

.Net
C
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
JavaScript (Node.js)
Lisp
Lua
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Rust
Scala

Java
PHP
Python

C
C++
Go
Java
Perl
Python
Ruby

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

Transaction Functions

yes, in Lua

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

Automatic, metric affinity per node

none

horizontal partitioning

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

configurable replication factor, datacenter aware

none

yes

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

Immediate consistency per node, eventual consistency across nodes

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

ACID

Isolation support depends on the API used

yes

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 storage is supported as well

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

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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