DBMS > Cassandra vs. FileMaker vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. IBM Cloudant vs. STSdb

System Properties Comparison Cassandra vs. FileMaker vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. IBM Cloudant vs. STSdb

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Wide-column store based on ideas of BigTable and DynamoDB

Optimized for write access

FileMaker is a cross-platform RDBMS that includes a GUI frontend.

Cloud-hosted realtime document store. iOS, Android, and JavaScript clients share one Realtime Database instance and automatically receive updates with the newest data.

Database as a Service offering based on Apache CouchDB

Key-Value Store with special method for indexing

optimized for high performance using a special indexing method

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	101.89
Rank	#12	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	48.20
Rank	#20	Overall
	#14	Relational DBMS

Score	14.29
Rank	#39	Overall
	#6	Document stores

Score	2.68
Rank	#106	Overall
	#20	Document stores

Score	0.04
Rank	#360	Overall
	#52	Key-value stores

Website

cassandra.apache.org

www.claris.com/filemaker

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

www.ibm.com/products/cloudant

github.com/STSSoft/STSdb4

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

www.claris.com/resources/documentation

firebase.google.com/docs/database

cloud.ibm.com/docs/Cloudant

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Claris

a subsidiary of Apple

Google

acquired by Google 2014

IBM, Apache Software Foundation

IBM acquired Cloudant in February 2014

STS Soft SC

Initial release

2008

1983

2012

2010

2011

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

19.4.1, November 2021

4.0.8, September 2015

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

commercial

Open Source

GPLv2, commercial license available

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

Erlang

Server operating systems

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

iOS

client part only
Linux
OS X
Windows

hosted

Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

primitive types and user defined types (classes)

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

A http query request can return the data in XML format

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

via plugins

APIs and other access methods

Proprietary protocol

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

Filemaker WebDirect
JDBC
ODBC

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

RESTful HTTP/JSON API

.NET Client API

Supported programming languages

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

PHP

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

C#
Java
JavaScript
Objective-C
PHP
Ruby

C#
Java

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

limited functionality with using 'rules'

View functions (Map-Reduce) in JavaScript

Triggers

yes

Callbacks are triggered when data changes

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

none

Sharding

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

Source-replica replication, warm standby

since Version 14

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

none

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

Eventual Consistency

if the client is offline
Immediate Consistency

if the client is online

Eventual 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

yes

atomic operations within a document possible

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Optimistic locking

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

In-memory capabilities

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

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users can be defined per object

simple rights management via user accounts and connection to external directory services

yes, based on authentication and database rules

Access rights for users can be defined per database

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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