DBMS > Cassandra vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. Kinetica vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Microsoft Azure Table Storage

System Properties Comparison Cassandra vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. Kinetica vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Microsoft Azure Table Storage

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.

Fully vectorized database across both GPUs and CPUs

Globally distributed, horizontally scalable, multi-model database service

A Wide Column Store for rapid development using massive semi-structured datasets

Primary database model

Wide column store

Document store

Relational DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store
Wide column store

Wide column store

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

Spatial DBMS
Time Series DBMS

Spatial 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	0.64
Rank	#236	Overall
	#109	Relational DBMS

Score	29.04
Rank	#27	Overall
	#4	Document stores
	#2	Graph DBMS
	#3	Key-value stores
	#3	Wide column stores

Score	4.48
Rank	#75	Overall
	#6	Wide column stores

Website

cassandra.apache.org

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

www.kinetica.com

azure.microsoft.com/services/cosmos-db

azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/storage/tables

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

firebase.google.com/docs/database

docs.kinetica.com

learn.microsoft.com/azure/cosmos-db

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Google

acquired by Google 2014

Kinetica

Microsoft

Initial release

2008

2012

2014

2012

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

7.1, August 2021

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

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++

Server operating systems

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

hosted

Linux

hosted

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

JSON types

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

All properties auto-indexed by default

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like SELECT, DML and DDL statements (CQL)

SQL-like DML and DDL statements

SQL-like query language

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
RESTful HTTP API

DocumentDB API
Graph API (Gremlin)
MongoDB API
RESTful HTTP API
Table API

RESTful HTTP API

Supported programming languages

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

C++
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

.Net
C#
Java
JavaScript
JavaScript (Node.js)
MongoDB client drivers written for various programming languages
Python

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

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

limited functionality with using 'rules'

user defined functions

JavaScript

Triggers

yes

Callbacks are triggered when data changes

yes

triggers when inserted values for one or more columns fall within a specified range

JavaScript

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

Source-replica replication

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

yes

implicit feature of the cloud service. Replication either local, cross-facility or geo-redundant.

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

with Hadoop integration

Integration with Hadoop/HDInsight on Azure*

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 configuration

Bounded Staleness
Consistent Prefix
Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Consistency level configurable on request level
Session 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

Multi-item ACID transactions with snapshot isolation within a partition

optimistic locking

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

GPU vRAM or System RAM

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users can be defined per object

yes, based on authentication and database rules

Access rights for users and roles on table level

Access rights can be defined down to the item level

Access rights based on private key authentication or shared access signatures

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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