DBMS > Cassandra vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. GigaSpaces vs. Realm

System Properties Comparison Cassandra vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. GigaSpaces vs. Realm

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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.

High performance in-memory data grid platform, powering three products: Smart Cache, Smart ODS (Operational Data Store), Smart Augmented Transactions

A DBMS built for use on mobile devices that’s a fast, easy to use alternative to SQLite and Core Data

Primary database model

Wide column store

Document store

Document store
Object oriented DBMS

Values are user defined objects

Document store

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

Graph DBMS
Search engine

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	1.03
Rank	#188	Overall
	#32	Document stores
	#6	Object oriented DBMS

Score	7.41
Rank	#52	Overall
	#8	Document stores

Website

cassandra.apache.org

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

www.gigaspaces.com

realm.io

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

firebase.google.com/docs/database

docs.gigaspaces.com/latest/landing.html

realm.io/docs

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Google

acquired by Google 2014

Gigaspaces Technologies

Realm, acquired by MongoDB in May 2019

Initial release

2008

2012

2000

2014

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

15.5, September 2020

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

commercial

Open Source

Apache Version 2; Commercial licenses available

Open Source

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

Java, C++, .Net

Server operating systems

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

hosted

Linux
macOS
Solaris
Windows

Android
Backend: server-less
iOS
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

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.

XML can be used for describing objects metadata

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-99 for query and DML statements

APIs and other access methods

Proprietary protocol

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

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

GigaSpaces LRMI
Hibernate
JCache
JDBC
JPA
ODBC
RESTful HTTP API
Spring Data

Supported programming languages

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

.Net
C++
Java
Python
Scala

.Net
Java

with Android only
Objective-C
React Native
Swift

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

limited functionality with using 'rules'

yes

runs within the applications so server-side scripts are unnecessary

Triggers

yes

Callbacks are triggered when data changes

yes, event driven architecture

yes

Change 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

synchronous or asynchronous
Source-replica replication

synchronous or asynchronous

none

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

Map-Reduce pattern can be built with XAP task executors

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

Immediate Consistency

Consistency level configurable: ALL, QUORUM, ANY

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

Transaction concepts

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

Atomicity and isolation are supported for single operations

yes

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

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.

yes

In-Memory realm

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users can be defined per object

yes, based on authentication and database rules

Role-based access control

yes

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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