DBMS > Cassandra vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. Informix vs. NCache vs. Oracle Rdb

System Properties Comparison Cassandra vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. Informix vs. NCache vs. Oracle Rdb

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.

A secure embeddable database from IBM, positioned besides IBM Db2 as a relatively low-cost product optimized for OLTP and Internet of Things data

Open-Source and Enterprise in-memory Key-Value Store

Primary database model

Wide column store

Document store

Relational DBMS

Since Version 12.10 support for JSON/BSON datatypes compatible with MongoDB

Key-value store

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

Document store
Spatial DBMS
Time Series DBMS

with Informix TimeSeries Extension

Document store
Search engine

Using distributed Lucene

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	17.87
Rank	#35	Overall
	#22	Relational DBMS

Score	0.94
Rank	#195	Overall
	#29	Key-value stores

Score	1.08
Rank	#184	Overall
	#85	Relational DBMS

Website

cassandra.apache.org

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

www.ibm.com/products/informix

www.alachisoft.com/ncache

www.oracle.com/database/technologies/related/rdb.html

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

firebase.google.com/docs/database

informix.hcldoc.com
www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SSGU8G/welcomeIfxServers.html

www.alachisoft.com/resources/docs

www.oracle.com/database/technologies/related/rdb-doc.html

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Google

acquired by Google 2014

IBM, HCL Technologies

Effective May 1st, 2017, HCL took on development, technical support, and product management teams, and works jointly with IBM on product strategy, marketing, and sales.

Alachisoft

Oracle, originally developed by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC)

Initial release

2008

2012

1984

2005

1984

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

14.10.FC5, November 2020

5.3.3, April 2024

7.4.1.1, 2021

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

commercial

free developer edition available

Open Source

Enterprise Edition available

commercial

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, C++ and Java

C#, .NET, .NET Core, Java

Server operating systems

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

hosted

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
macOS
Solaris
Windows

Linux
Windows

HP Open VMS

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free

Flexible Schema (defined schema, partial schema, schema free)

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

Since Version 12.10 support for JSON/BSON datatypes

partial

Supported data types are Lists, Queues, Hashsets, Dictionary and Counter

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

SQL-like query syntax and LINQ for searching the cache. Cache Synchronization with SQL Server using SQL dependency.

yes

APIs and other access methods

Proprietary protocol

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

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

JDBC
JSON API

MongoDB compatible
MQTT (Message Queue Telemetry Transport)
ODBC
RESTful HTTP API

IDistributedCache
JCache
LINQ
Proprietary native API

Supported programming languages

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

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

.Net
.Net Core
C#
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python
Scala

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

limited functionality with using 'rules'

yes

support for stored procedures with SQL-Server CLR

Triggers

yes

Callbacks are triggered when data changes

yes

Notifications

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

Sharding

yes

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

yes, with selectable consistency level

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

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency
Strong Eventual Consistency over WAN with Conflict Resolution using Bridge Topology

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

optimistic locking and pessimistic locking

yes, on a single node

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

Users with fine-grained authentication, authorization, and auditing controls

Authentication to access the cache via Active Directory/LDAP (possible roles: user, administrator)

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Apache Cassandra is the leading NoSQL, distributed database management system, well...
» more

NCache has been the market leader in .NET Distributed Caching since 2005 . NCache...
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Competitive advantages

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

NCache is 100% .NET/ .NET Core based which fully supports ASP.NET Core Sessions ,...
» more

Typical application scenarios

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

NCache enables industries like retail, finance, banking IoT, travel, ecommerce, healthcare...
» more

Key customers

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

Bank of America, Citi, Natures Way, Charter Spectrum, Barclays, Henry Schein, GBM,...
» more

Market metrics

Cassandra is used by 40% of the Fortune 100.
» more

Market Leader in .NET Distributed Caching since 2005.
» more

Licensing and pricing models

Apache licenseÂ Pricing for commercial distributions provided by DataStax and available...
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NCache Open Source is free on an as-is basis without any support. NCache Enterprise...
» more

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