DBMS > Cassandra vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. FoundationDB vs. LokiJS vs. MarkLogic

System Properties Comparison Cassandra vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. FoundationDB vs. LokiJS vs. MarkLogic

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Created as commercial project in 2013, FoundationDB has been acquired by Apple in March 2015 and was withdrawn from the market.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

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

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

In-memory JavaScript DBMS

Operational and transactional Enterprise NoSQL database

Primary database model

Wide column store

Document store

supported via specific layer
Key-value store
Relational DBMS

supported via specific SQL-layer

Document store

Document store
Native XML DBMS
RDF store

as of version 7
Search engine

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	14.29
Rank	#39	Overall
	#6	Document stores

Score	1.03
Rank	#190	Overall
	#31	Document stores
	#28	Key-value stores
	#89	Relational DBMS

Score	0.43
Rank	#264	Overall
	#42	Document stores

Score	5.92
Rank	#58	Overall
	#10	Document stores
	#1	Native XML DBMS
	#1	RDF stores
	#6	Search engines

Website

cassandra.apache.org

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

github.com/apple/foundationdb

github.com/techfort/LokiJS

www.marklogic.com

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

firebase.google.com/docs/database

apple.github.io/foundationdb

techfort.github.io/LokiJS

docs.marklogic.com

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Google

acquired by Google 2014

FoundationDB

MarkLogic Corp.

Initial release

2008

2012

2013

2014

2001

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

6.2.28, November 2020

11.0, December 2022

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

commercial

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

commercial

restricted free version is 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

C++

JavaScript

C++

Server operating systems

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

hosted

Linux
OS X
Windows

server-less, requires a JavaScript environment (browser, Node.js)

Linux
OS X
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

some layers support schemas

schema-free

Schema can be enforced

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

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

via views

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

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

supported in specific SQL layer only

yes

SQL92

APIs and other access methods

Proprietary protocol

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

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

JavaScript API

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

Supported programming languages

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

.Net
C
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
PHP
Python
Ruby
Swift

JavaScript

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

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

limited functionality with using 'rules'

in SQL-layer only

View functions in JavaScript

yes

via XQuery or 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"

Sharding

none

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

yes

none

yes

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

if the client is offline
Immediate Consistency

if the client is online

Linearizable consistency

none

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

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

yes

ACID

atomic operations within a single collection possible

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

Serialization of a DB in a Node.JS/Cordova/PhoneGap environment. Usage of the IndexedDB-API in a browser.

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

yes, based on authentication and database rules

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.
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Licensing and pricing models

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