DBMS > Cassandra vs. Drizzle vs. HarperDB vs. MariaDB

System Properties Comparison Cassandra vs. Drizzle vs. HarperDB vs. MariaDB

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Drizzle has published its last release in September 2012. The open-source project is discontinued and Drizzle is excluded from the DB-Engines ranking.

Description

Wide-column store based on ideas of BigTable and DynamoDB

Optimized for write access

MySQL fork with a pluggable micro-kernel and with an emphasis of performance over compatibility.

Ultra-low latency distributed database with an intuitive REST API supporting NoSQL and SQL (including joins). Deployment of functions and databases simultaneously with a consolidated node-level architecture.

MySQL application compatible open source RDBMS, enhanced with high availability, security, interoperability and performance capabilities. MariaDB ColumnStore provides a column-oriented storage engine and MariaDB Xpand supports distributed SQL.

Primary database model

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

Document store
Graph DBMS

with OQGraph storage engine
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	101.89
Rank	#12	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	0.55
Rank	#248	Overall
	#38	Document stores

Score	93.21
Rank	#13	Overall
	#9	Relational DBMS

Website

cassandra.apache.org

www.harperdb.io

mariadb.com

Site of MariaDB Corporation
mariadb.org

Site of MariaDB Foundation

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

docs.harperdb.io/docs

mariadb.com/kb/en/library

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Drizzle project, originally started by Brian Aker

HarperDB

MariaDB Corporation Ab (MariaDB Enterprise),
MariaDB Foundation (community MariaDB Server)

The lead developer Monty Widenius is the original author of MySQL

Initial release

2008

2017

2009

Fork of MySQL, which was first released in 1995

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

7.2.4, September 2012

3.1, August 2021

11.3.2, February 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

GNU GPL

commercial

free community edition available

Open Source

GPL version 2, commercial enterprise subscription available

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

C++

Node.js

C and C++

Server operating systems

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

FreeBSD
Linux
OS X

Linux
OS X

FreeBSD
Linux
Solaris
Windows

ColumnStore storage engine not available on Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

dynamic schema

yes

Dynamic columns are supported

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

JSON 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)

yes

with proprietary extensions

SQL-like data manipulation statements

yes

with proprietary extensions

APIs and other access methods

Proprietary protocol

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

JDBC

JDBC
ODBC
React Hooks
RESTful HTTP/JSON API
WebSocket

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary native API

Supported programming languages

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

C
C++
Java
PHP

.Net
C
C#
C++
ColdFusion
D
Dart
Delphi
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Lisp
MatLab
Objective C
Perl
PHP
PowerShell
Prolog
Python
R
Ruby
Rust
Scala
Swift

Ada
C
C#
C++
D
Eiffel
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

Custom Functions

since release 3.1

yes

PL/SQL compatibility added with version 10.3

Triggers

yes

hooks for callbacks inside the server can be used.

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

Sharding

A table resides as a whole on one (or more) nodes in a cluster

several options for horizontal partitioning and Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

yes

the nodes on which a table resides can be defined

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

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

not for MyISAM storage engine

Transaction concepts

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

Atomicity and isolation are supported for single operations

ACID

Atomic execution of specific operations

ACID

not for MyISAM storage engine

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

yes, using LMDB

yes

not for in-memory storage engine

In-memory capabilities

Is there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.

yes

with MEMORY storage engine

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users can be defined per object

Pluggable authentication mechanisms

e.g. LDAP, HTTP

Access rights for users and roles

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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MariaDB is the most powerful open source relational database – modern SQL and JSON...
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Competitive advantages

No single point of failure ensures 100% availability . Operational simplicity for...
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MariaDB Servers have many features unavailable in other open source relational databases....
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Typical application scenarios

Internet of Things (IOT), fraud detection applications, recommendation engines, product...
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Web, SaaS and Cloud operational applications that require high availability, scalability...
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Key customers

Apple, Netflix, Uber, ING,, Intuit,Fidelity, NY Times, Outbrain, BazaarVoice, Best...
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Deutsche Bank, DBS Bank, Nasdaq, Red Hat, ServiceNow, Verizon and Walgreens Featured...
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Market metrics

Cassandra is used by 40% of the Fortune 100.
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MariaDB is the default database in the LAMP stack supplied by Red Hat and SUSE Linux,...
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Licensing and pricing models

Apache licenseÂ Pricing for commercial distributions provided by DataStax and available...
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MariaDB plc subscriptions cover our free, open source database, Community Server,...
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