DBMS > Cassandra vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. IBM Db2 vs. JaguarDB vs. SpatiaLite

System Properties Comparison Cassandra vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. IBM Db2 vs. JaguarDB vs. SpatiaLite

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.

Common in IBM host environments, 2 different versions for host and Windows/Linux

Performant, highly scalable DBMS for AI and IoT applications

Spatial extension of SQLite

Primary database model

Wide column store

Document store

Relational DBMS

Since Version 10.5 support for JSON/BSON documents compatible with MongoDB

Key-value store
Vector DBMS

Spatial DBMS

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

Document store
RDF store

in Db2 LUW (Linux, Unix, Windows)
Spatial DBMS

with Db2 Spatial Extender

Relational DBMS

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

Score	101.89
Rank	#12	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	14.29
Rank	#39	Overall
	#6	Document stores

Score	128.46
Rank	#8	Overall
	#5	Relational DBMS

Score	0.00
Rank	#383	Overall
	#60	Key-value stores
	#13	Vector DBMS

Score	1.60
Rank	#149	Overall
	#3	Spatial DBMS

Website

cassandra.apache.org

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

www.ibm.com/products/db2

www.jaguardb.com

www.gaia-gis.it/fossil/libspatialite/index

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

firebase.google.com/docs/database

www.ibm.com/docs/en/db2

www.jaguardb.com/support.html

www.gaia-gis.it/gaia-sins/spatialite_topics.html

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Google

acquired by Google 2014

IBM

DataJaguar, Inc.

Alessandro Furieri

Initial release

2008

2012

1983

host version

2015

2008

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

12.1, October 2016

3.3 July 2023

5.0.0, August 2020

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

commercial

free version is available

Open Source

GPL V3.0

Open Source

MPL 1.1, GPL v2.0 or LGPL v2.1

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

C and C++

C++

the server part. Clients available in other languages

C++

Server operating systems

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

hosted

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
Solaris
Windows
z/OS

Linux

server-less

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.

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

A subset of ANSI SQL is implemented

but no views, foreign keys, triggers

yes

APIs and other access methods

Proprietary protocol

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

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

ADO.NET
JDBC
JSON style queries

MongoDB compatible
ODBC
XQuery

JDBC
ODBC

Supported programming languages

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

C
C#
C++
Cobol
Delphi
Fortran
Java
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Visual Basic

C
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

limited functionality with using 'rules'

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

only with Windows/Unix/Linux Version

Sharding

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

yes

with separate tools (MQ, InfoSphere)

Multi-source 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

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

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

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

rights management via user accounts

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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