DBMS > Cassandra vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. Google Cloud Firestore vs. IBM Db2 warehouse vs. Lovefield

System Properties Comparison Cassandra vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. Google Cloud Firestore vs. IBM Db2 warehouse vs. Lovefield

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.

Cloud Firestore is an auto-scaling document database for storing, syncing, and querying data for mobile and web apps. It offers seamless integration with other Firebase and Google Cloud Platform products.

Cloud-based data warehousing service

Embeddable relational database for web apps written in pure JavaScript

Primary database model

Wide column store

Document store

Relational DBMS

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	7.36
Rank	#53	Overall
	#9	Document stores

Score	1.37
Rank	#160	Overall
	#74	Relational DBMS

Score	0.33
Rank	#286	Overall
	#131	Relational DBMS

Website

cassandra.apache.org

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

firebase.google.com/products/firestore

www.ibm.com/products/db2/warehouse

google.github.io/lovefield

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

firebase.google.com/docs/database

firebase.google.com/docs/firestore

github.com/google/lovefield/blob/master/docs/spec_index.md

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Google

acquired by Google 2014

Google

IBM

Google

Initial release

2008

2012

2017

2014

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

2.1.12, February 2017

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

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

JavaScript

Server operating systems

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

hosted

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

tested with Chrome, Firefox, IE, Safari

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.

Import/export of XML data possible

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

SQL-like query language

via JavaScript builder pattern

APIs and other access methods

Proprietary protocol

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

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

Android
gRPC (using protocol buffers) API
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

.NET Client API
JDBC
ODBC
OLE DB

Supported programming languages

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

Go
Java
JavaScript
JavaScript (Node.js)
Objective-C
Python

Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Ruby

JavaScript

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

limited functionality with using 'rules'

yes, Firebase Rules & Cloud Functions

PL/SQL, SQL PL

Triggers

yes

Callbacks are triggered when data changes

yes, with Cloud Functions

yes

Using read-only observers

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

yes

none

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

Using Cloud Dataflow

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

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

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

yes, by using IndexedDB or the cloud service Firebase Realtime Database

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

using MemoryDB

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. Security Rules for 3rd party authentication using Firebase Auth.

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.
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Licensing and pricing models

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