DBMS > Cassandra vs. Faircom DB vs. FoundationDB vs. MarkLogic vs. mSQL

System Properties Comparison Cassandra vs. Faircom DB vs. FoundationDB vs. MarkLogic vs. mSQL

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Created as commercial project in 2013, FoundationDB has been acquired by Apple in March 2015 and was withdrawn from the market. As a consequence, the product was removed from the DB-Engines ranking. In April 2018, Apple open-sourced FoundationDB and it therefore reappears in the ranking.

Description

Wide-column store based on ideas of BigTable and DynamoDB

Optimized for write access

Native high-speed multi-model DBMS for relational and key-value store data simultaneously accessible through SQL and NoSQL APIs.

Ordered key-value store. Core features are complimented by layers.

Operational and transactional Enterprise NoSQL database

mSQL (Mini SQL) is a simple and lightweight RDBMS

Primary database model

Wide column store

Key-value store
Relational DBMS

Document store

supported via specific layer
Key-value store
Relational DBMS

supported via specific SQL-layer

Document store
Native XML DBMS
RDF store

as of version 7
Search engine

Relational DBMS

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	0.29
Rank	#304	Overall
	#43	Key-value stores
	#136	Relational DBMS

Score	1.06
Rank	#185	Overall
	#31	Document stores
	#28	Key-value stores
	#85	Relational DBMS

Score	5.18
Rank	#63	Overall
	#11	Document stores
	#1	Native XML DBMS
	#1	RDF stores
	#7	Search engines

Score	1.27
Rank	#169	Overall
	#76	Relational DBMS

Website

cassandra.apache.org

www.faircom.com/products/faircom-db

github.com/apple/foundationdb

www.progress.com/marklogic

hughestech.com.au/products/msql

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

docs.faircom.com/docs/en/UUID-7446ae34-a1a7-c843-c894-d5322e395184.html

apple.github.io/foundationdb

www.progress.com/marklogic/documentation

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

FairCom Corporation

FoundationDB

MarkLogic Corp.

Hughes Technologies

Initial release

2008

1979

2013

2001

1994

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

V12, November 2020

6.2.28, November 2020

11.0, December 2022

4.4, October 2021

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

commercial

Restricted, free version available

Open Source

Apache 2.0

commercial

restricted free version is available

commercial

free licenses can be provided

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

ANSI C, C++

C++

Server operating systems

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

AIX
FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
NetBSD
OS X
QNX
SCO
Solaris
VxWorks
Windows

easily portable to other OSs

Linux
OS X
Windows

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
Solaris SPARC/x86
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

schema free, schema optional, schema required, partial schema,

schema-free

some layers support schemas

schema-free

Schema can be enforced

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

yes, ANSI SQL Types, JSON, typed binary structures

some layers support typing

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, ANSI SQL with proprietary extensions

supported in specific SQL layer only

yes

SQL92

A subset of ANSI SQL is implemented

no subqueries, aggregate functions, views, foreign keys, triggers

APIs and other access methods

Proprietary protocol

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

ADO.NET
Direct SQL
JDBC
JPA
ODBC
RESTful HTTP/JSON API
RESTful MQTT/JSON API
RPC

Java API
Node.js Client API
ODBC
proprietary Optic API

Proprietary Query API, introduced with version 9
RESTful HTTP API
SPARQL
WebDAV
XDBC
XQuery
XSLT

JDBC
ODBC

Supported programming languages

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

.Net
C
C#
C++
Java
JavaScript (Node.js and browser)
PHP
Python
Visual Basic

.Net
C
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
PHP
Python
Ruby
Swift

C
C#
C++
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

C
C++
Delphi
Java
Perl
PHP
Tcl

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

.Net, JavaScript, C/C++

in SQL-layer only

yes

via XQuery or JavaScript

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

File partitioning, horizontal partitioning, sharding

Customizable business rules for table partitioning

Sharding

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

yes, configurable to be parallel or serial, synchronous or asynchronous, uni-directional or bi-directional, ACID-consistent or eventually consistent (with custom conflict resolution).

yes

none

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

via Hadoop Connector, HDFS Direct Access and in-database MapReduce jobs

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

can be individually decided for each write operation

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency
Tunable consistency per server, database, table, and transaction

Linearizable consistency

Immediate Consistency

none

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

in SQL-layer only

Transaction concepts

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

Atomicity and isolation are supported for single operations

tunable from ACID to Eventually Consistent

ACID

can act as a resource manager in an XA/JTA transaction

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

Yes, tunable from durable to delayed durability to in-memory

yes

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

yes, with Range Indexes

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users can be defined per object

Fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard with additional protections for files

Role-based access control at the document and subdocument levels

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.
» more

Licensing and pricing models

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