DBMS > Cassandra vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. Hive vs. Ingres vs. QuestDB

System Properties Comparison Cassandra vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. Hive vs. Ingres vs. QuestDB

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.

data warehouse software for querying and managing large distributed datasets, built on Hadoop

Well established RDBMS

A high performance open source SQL database for time series data

Primary database model

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

Relational DBMS

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	59.76
Rank	#18	Overall
	#12	Relational DBMS

Score	3.80
Rank	#82	Overall
	#44	Relational DBMS

Score	2.70
Rank	#105	Overall
	#8	Time Series DBMS

Website

cassandra.apache.org

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

hive.apache.org

www.actian.com/databases/ingres

questdb.io

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

firebase.google.com/docs/database

cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/Hive/Home

docs.actian.com/ingres

questdb.io/docs

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Google

acquired by Google 2014

Apache Software Foundation

initially developed by Facebook

Actian Corporation

QuestDB Technology Inc

Initial release

2008

2012

1974

originally developed at University Berkely in early 1970s

2014

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

3.1.3, April 2022

11.2, May 2022

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

commercial

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

Java (Zero-GC), C++, Rust

Server operating systems

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

hosted

All OS with a Java VM

AIX
HP Open VMS
HP-UX
Linux
Solaris
Windows

Linux
macOS
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free via InfluxDB Line Protocol

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.

but tools for importing/exporting data from/to XML-files available

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 DML and DDL statements

yes

SQL with time-series extensions

APIs and other access methods

Proprietary protocol

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

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

JDBC
ODBC
Thrift

.NET Client API
JDBC
ODBC
proprietary protocol (OpenAPI)

HTTP REST
InfluxDB Line Protocol (TCP/UDP)
JDBC
PostgreSQL wire protocol

Supported programming languages

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

C++
Java
PHP
Python

PostgreSQL driver
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python
Rust

over HTTP

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

limited functionality with using 'rules'

yes

user defined functions and integration of map-reduce

yes

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

horizontal partitioning

Ingres Star to access multiple databases simultaneously

horizontal partitioning (by timestamps)

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

selectable replication factor

Ingres Replicator

Source-replica replication with eventual consistency

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

query execution via MapReduce

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

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

ACID for single-table writes

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

MVCC

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

through memory mapped files

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

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

Relational model with native time series support Column-based storage and time partitioned...
» more

Competitive advantages

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

High ingestion throughput: peak of 4M rows/sec (TSBS Benchmark) Code optimizations...
» more

Typical application scenarios

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

Financial tick data Industrial IoT Application Metrics Monitoring
» more

Key customers

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

Banks & Hedge funds, Yahoo, OKX, Airbus, Aquis Exchange, Net App, Cloudera, Airtel,...
» 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

Open source Apache 2.0 QuestDB Enterprise QuestDB Cloud
» more

News

Focus on Creativity, Not Clusters: DataStax Mission Control in Action!
30 May 2024

How Concide Built its Chat Platform with Enhanced Document Management for Legal Tech Professionals
23 May 2024

Astra Vectorize: Generate Vector Embeddings with 1 Line of Code
22 May 2024

GitHub Copilot + DataStax Astra DB: Build GenAI Apps 100x Faster
21 May 2024

Empowering On-Premises Deployments with Generative AI: Introducing Vector Search for a Self-Managed Modern Architecture
15 May 2024

QuestDB 8.0: Major Release
23 May 2024

QuestDB and Raspberry Pi 5 benchmark, a pocket-sized powerhouse
8 May 2024

Build your own resource monitor with QuestDB and Grafana
6 May 2024

Does "vpmovzxbd" Scare You? Here's Why it Doesn't Have To
12 April 2024

Create an ADS-B flight radar with QuestDB and a Raspberry Pi
8 April 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.