DBMS > Cassandra vs. Elasticsearch vs. MongoDB vs. NebulaGraph vs. Virtuoso

System Properties Comparison Cassandra vs. Elasticsearch vs. MongoDB vs. NebulaGraph vs. Virtuoso

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Wide-column store based on ideas of BigTable and DynamoDB

Optimized for write access

A distributed, RESTful modern search and analytics engine based on Apache Lucene

Elasticsearch lets you perform and combine many types of searches such as structured, unstructured, geo, and metric

One of the most popular document stores available both as a fully managed cloud service and for deployment on self-managed infrastructure

A distributed, linear scalable, high perfomant Graph DBMS

Virtuoso is a multi-model hybrid-RDBMS that supports management of data represented as relational tables and/or property graphs

Primary database model

Document store
Graph DBMS
Native XML DBMS
Relational DBMS
RDF store
Search engine

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

Document store
Spatial DBMS
Vector DBMS

Spatial DBMS
Search engine

integrated Lucene index, currently in MongoDB Atlas only.
Time Series DBMS

Time Series Collections introduced in Release 5.0
Vector DBMS

currently available in the MongoDB Atlas cloud service only

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	135.35
Rank	#7	Overall
	#1	Search engines

Score	421.65
Rank	#5	Overall
	#1	Document stores

Score	2.14
Rank	#120	Overall
	#10	Graph DBMS

Score	4.26
Rank	#78	Overall
	#13	Document stores
	#4	Graph DBMS
	#2	Native XML DBMS
	#42	Relational DBMS
	#2	RDF stores
	#9	Search engines

Website

cassandra.apache.org

www.elastic.co/elasticsearch

www.mongodb.com

github.com/vesoft-inc/nebula
www.nebula-graph.io

virtuoso.openlinksw.com

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/index.html

www.mongodb.com/docs/manual

docs.nebula-graph.io

docs.openlinksw.com/virtuoso

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Elastic

MongoDB, Inc

Vesoft Inc.

OpenLink Software

Initial release

2008

2010

2009

2019

1998

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

8.6, January 2023

6.0.7, June 2023

7.2.11, September 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

Elastic License

Open Source

MongoDB Inc.'s Server Side Public License v1. Prior versions were published under GNU AGPL v3.0. Commercial licenses are also available.

Open Source

Apache Version 2.0 + Common Clause 1.0

Open Source

GPLv2, extended commercial license available

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

MongoDB available as DBaaS (MongoDB Atlas)

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.

MongoDB Atlas: Global multi-cloud database with unmatched data distribution and mobility across AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, built-in automation for resource and workload optimization, and so much more.

Implementation language

Java

C++

Server operating systems

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

All OS with a Java VM

Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Linux

AIX
FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

Flexible type definitions. Once a type is defined, it is persistent

schema-free

Although schema-free, documents of the same collection often follow the same structure. Optionally impose all or part of a schema by defining a JSON schema.

Strong typed schema

yes

SQL - Standard relational schema
RDF - Quad (S, P, O, G) or Triple (S, P, O)
XML - DTD, XML Schema
DAV - freeform filesystem objects, plus User Defined Types a/k/a Dynamic Extension Type

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

string, integer, double, decimal, boolean, date, object_id, geospatial

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

All search fields are automatically indexed

yes

Nebula Graph internally uses the Key-Value store RocksDB for persistency. The vertices, edges, and their properties are stored as Key while their values are stored as Value. The primary indexes are per Key and secondary indexes are per Value.

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

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

SQL-like query language

Read-only SQL queries via the MongoDB Atlas SQL Interface

SQL-like query language

yes

SQL-92, SQL-200x, SQL-3, SQLX

APIs and other access methods

Proprietary protocol

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

Java API
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

GraphQL
HTTP REST
Prisma
proprietary protocol using JSON

Browser interface
console (shell)
Cypher Query Language
GO Object Graph Mapper
Java Object Graph Mapper
NGBatis

ORM framework for NebulaGraph and Spring-Boot
Proprietary native API
Python Object Graph Mapper
Query language nGQL

ADO.NET
GeoSPARQL
HTTP API
JDBC
Jena RDF API
ODBC
OLE DB
RDF4J API
RESTful HTTP API
Sesame REST HTTP Protocol
SOAP webservices
SPARQL 1.1
WebDAV
XPath
XQuery
XSLT

Supported programming languages

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

.Net
Groovy
Community Contributed Clients
Java
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

Actionscript

unofficial driver
C
C#
C++
Clojure

unofficial driver
ColdFusion

unofficial driver
D

unofficial driver
Dart

unofficial driver
Delphi

unofficial driver
Erlang
Go
Groovy

unofficial driver
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Kotlin
Lisp

unofficial driver
Lua

unofficial driver
MatLab

unofficial driver
Perl
PHP
PowerShell

unofficial driver
Prolog

unofficial driver
Python
R

unofficial driver
Ruby
Rust
Scala
Smalltalk

unofficial driver
Swift

.Net
C++
Go
Java
PHP
Python

.Net
C
C#
C++
Java
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Visual Basic

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

JavaScript

user defined functions

yes

Virtuoso PL

Triggers

yes

by using the 'percolation' feature

yes

in MongoDB Atlas only

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

Sharding

Partitioned by hashed, ranged, or zoned sharding keys. Live resharding allows users to change their shard keys as an online operation with zero downtime.

Sharding

yes

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

yes

Multi-Source deployments with MongoDB Atlas Global Clusters
Source-replica replication

Causal Clustering using Raft protocol

Chain, star, and bi-directional replication
Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

ES-Hadoop Connector

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

can be individually decided for each write operation

Eventual Consistency

Synchronous doc based replication. Get by ID may show delays up to 1 sec. Configurable write consistency: one, quorum, all

Eventual Consistency

can be individually decided for each read operation
Immediate Consistency

default behaviour

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

typically not used, however similar functionality with DBRef possible

yes

Relationships in graphs

yes

Transaction concepts

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

Atomicity and isolation are supported for single operations

Multi-document ACID Transactions with snapshot isolation

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

optional, enabled by default

yes

using RocksDB

yes

In-memory capabilities

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

Memcached and Redis integration

yes

In-memory storage engine introduced with MongoDB version 3.2

yes

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users can be defined per object

Access rights for users and roles

Role-based access control

Fine-grained Attribute-Based Access Control (ABAC) in addition to typical coarse-grained Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) according to SQL-standard. Pluggable authentication with supported standards (LDAP, Active Directory, Kerberos)

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Apache Cassandra is the leading NoSQL, distributed database management system, well...
» more

MongoDB provides an integrated suite of cloud database and data services to accelerate...
» more

NebulaGraph is a truly distributed, linearly scalable, lightning-fast graph database,...
» more

Virtuoso is a modern multi-model RDBMS for managing data represented as tabular relations...
» more

Competitive advantages

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

Built around the flexible document data model and unified API, MongoDB is a developer...
» more

NebulaGraph boasts the world's only graph database solution that is able to host...
» more

Performance & Scale — as exemplified by DBpedia and the LOD Cloud it spawned, i.e.,...
» more

Typical application scenarios

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

AI-enriched intelligent apps (Continental, Telefonica, Iron Mountain) Internet of...
» more

Social networking Fraud detection Knowledge graph Data warehouse management Anti...
» more

Used for — Analytics/BI Conceptual Data Virtualization Enterprise Knowledge Graphs...
» more

Key customers

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

ADP, Adobe, Amadeus, AstraZeneca, Auto Trader, Barclays, BBVA, Bosch, Cisco, CERN,...
» more

Companies from a variety of industries have implemented NebulaGraph Database in production,...
» more

Broad use across enterprises and governments including — European Union (EU) US Government...
» more

Market metrics

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

Hundreds of millions downloads, over 150,000+ Atlas clusters provisioned every month...
» more

At our very early stage, NebulaGraph has already received over 10,000 stars on GitHub...
» more

Largest installed-base of Multi-Model RDBMS for AI-friendly Knowledge Graphs Platform...
» more

Licensing and pricing models

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

MongoDB database server: Server-Side Public License (SSPL) . Commercial licenses...
» more

NebulaGraph is open source and free to use under Apache 2.0 license.
» more

Available in both Commercial Enterprise and Open Source (GPL v2) Editions Feature...
» more

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.