DBMS > Cassandra vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. Google Cloud Datastore vs. MySQL vs. Trafodion

System Properties Comparison Cassandra vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. Google Cloud Datastore vs. MySQL vs. Trafodion

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Apache Trafodion has been retired in 2021. Therefore it is excluded from the DB-Engines 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.

Automatically scaling NoSQL Database as a Service (DBaaS) on the Google Cloud Platform

Widely used open source RDBMS

Transactional SQL-on-Hadoop DBMS

Primary database model

Wide column store

Document store

Relational DBMS

Key/Value like access via memcached API

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

Document store
Spatial DBMS

DB-Engines Ranking measures the popularity of database management systems
Trend Chart

Score	103.86
Rank	#12	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	15.00
Rank	#39	Overall
	#6	Document stores

Score	4.49
Rank	#79	Overall
	#12	Document stores

Score	1087.72
Rank	#2	Overall
	#2	Relational DBMS

Website

cassandra.apache.org

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

cloud.google.com/datastore

www.mysql.com

trafodion.apache.org

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

firebase.google.com/docs/database

cloud.google.com/datastore/docs

dev.mysql.com/doc

trafodion.apache.org/documentation.html

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Google

acquired by Google 2014

Google

Oracle

since 2010, originally MySQL AB, then Sun

Apache Software Foundation, originally developed by HP

Initial release

2008

2012

2008

1995

2014

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

8.3.0, January 2024

2.3.0, February 2019

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

commercial

Open Source

GPL version 2. Commercial licenses with extended functionallity are available

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.

Aiven for MySQL: Fully managed MySQL, deployable in the cloud of your choice, with seamless integrations and lightning-fast setup.

Implementation language

Java

C and C++

C++, Java

Server operating systems

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

hosted

FreeBSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Linux

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

yes, details here

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)

SQL-like query language (GQL)

yes

with proprietary extensions

yes

APIs and other access methods

Proprietary protocol

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

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

gRPC (using protocol buffers) API
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary native API

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC

Supported programming languages

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

.Net
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby

Ada
C
C#
C++
D
Delphi
Eiffel
Erlang
Haskell
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl

All languages supporting JDBC/ODBC/ADO.Net

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

limited functionality with using 'rules'

using Google App Engine

yes

proprietary syntax

Java Stored Procedures

Triggers

yes

Callbacks are triggered when data changes

Callbacks using the Google Apps Engine

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

Sharding

horizontal partitioning, sharding with MySQL Cluster or MySQL Fabric

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

Multi-source replication using Paxos

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

yes, via HBase

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

using Google Cloud Dataflow

yes

via user defined functions and HBase

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 or Eventual Consistency depending on type of query and configuration

Strong Consistency is default for entity lookups and queries within an Entity Group (but can instead be made eventually consistent). Other queries are always eventual consistent.

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

via ReferenceProperties or Ancestor paths

yes

not for MyISAM storage engine

yes

Transaction concepts

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

Atomicity and isolation are supported for single operations

yes

ACID

Serializable Isolation within Transactions, Read Committed outside of Transactions

ACID

not for MyISAM storage engine

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

table locks or row locks depending on storage engine

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

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users can be defined per object

yes, based on authentication and database rules

Access rights for users, groups and roles based on Google Cloud Identity and Access Management (IAM)

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

no user groups or roles

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...
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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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