DBMS > Cassandra vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. Geode vs. TimesTen vs. TinkerGraph

System Properties Comparison Cassandra vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. Geode vs. TimesTen vs. TinkerGraph

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

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.

Geode is a distributed data container, pooling memory, CPU, network resources, and optionally local disk across multiple processes

In-Memory RDBMS compatible to Oracle

A lightweight, in-memory graph engine that serves as a reference implementation of the TinkerPop3 API

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	98.83
Rank	#12	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	13.64
Rank	#39	Overall
	#6	Document stores

Score	1.86
Rank	#134	Overall
	#24	Key-value stores

Score	1.36
Rank	#161	Overall
	#75	Relational DBMS

Score	0.13
Rank	#345	Overall
	#35	Graph DBMS

Website

cassandra.apache.org

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

geode.apache.org

www.oracle.com/database/technologies/related/timesten.html

tinkerpop.apache.org/docs/current/reference/#tinkergraph-gremlin

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

firebase.google.com/docs/database

geode.apache.org/docs

docs.oracle.com/database/timesten-18.1

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Google

acquired by Google 2014

Originally developed by Gemstone. They outsourced the project to Apache in 2015 but still deliver a commercial version as Gemfire.

Oracle, TimesTen Performance Software, HP

originally founded in HP Labs it was acquired by Oracle in 2005

Initial release

2008

2012

2002

1998

2009

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

1.1, February 2017

11 Release 2 (11.2.2.8.0)

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

commercial

Open Source

Apache Version 2; commercial licenses available as Gemfire

commercial

Open Source

Apache 2.0

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

Server operating systems

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

hosted

All OS with a Java VM

the JDK (8 or later) is also required

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

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

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.

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)

SQL-like query language (OQL)

yes

APIs and other access methods

Proprietary protocol

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

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

Java Client API
Memcached protocol
RESTful HTTP API

JDBC
ODBC
ODP.NET
Oracle Call Interface (OCI)

TinkerPop 3

Supported programming languages

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

.Net
All JVM based languages
C++
Groovy
Java
Scala

C
C++
Java
PL/SQL

Groovy
Java

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

limited functionality with using 'rules'

user defined functions

PL/SQL

Triggers

yes

Callbacks are triggered when data changes

yes

Cache Event Listeners

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

Sharding

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

Multi-source replication

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

Immediate Consistency or Eventual Consistency depending on configuration

none

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Relationships in graphs

Transaction concepts

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

Atomicity and isolation are supported for single operations

yes

yes, on a single node

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

by means of logfiles and checkpoints

optional

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users can be defined per object

yes, based on authentication and database rules

Access rights per client and object definable

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...
» more

Competitive advantages

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

Typical application scenarios

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

Key customers

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

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...
» more

News

Test Drive Vector Search with DataStax Enterprise 6.9
25 June 2024

Introducing DataStax Langflow: Design and Test GenAI Apps with Ease
24 June 2024

RAGStack 1.0 Is Generally Available! A Comprehensive Solution for AI App Development
24 June 2024

An Introduction to David Jones-Gilardi, Developer Relations
11 June 2024

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.