DBMS > Cassandra vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. Memcached vs. OceanBase

System Properties Comparison Cassandra vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. Memcached vs. OceanBase

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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.

In-memory key-value store, originally intended for caching

A distributed, high available RDBMS compatible with Oracle and MySQL

Primary database model

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

Document store
Wide column store

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	18.08
Rank	#32	Overall
	#4	Key-value stores

Score	1.57
Rank	#149	Overall
	#69	Relational DBMS

Website

cassandra.apache.org

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

www.memcached.org

en.oceanbase.com

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

firebase.google.com/docs/database

github.com/memcached/memcached/wiki

en.oceanbase.com/docs/oceanbase-database

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Google

acquired by Google 2014

Danga Interactive

originally developed by Brad Fitzpatrick for LiveJournal

OceanBase

previously Alibaba and Ant Group

Initial release

2008

2012

2003

2010

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

1.6.27, May 2024

4.3.0, April 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

commercial

Open Source

BSD license

Open Source

Commercial license available

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++

Server operating systems

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

hosted

FreeBSD
Linux
OS X
Unix
Windows

Linux

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.

yes

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

APIs and other access methods

Proprietary protocol

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

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

Proprietary protocol

JDBC
ODBC
ODP.NET
Oracle Call Interface (OCI)
Proprietary native API
Table 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++
ColdFusion
Erlang
Java
Lisp
Lua
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

Ada

in MySQL-compatible model
C

in Oracle- and MySQL- compatible models
C++

in Oracle- and MySQL- compatible models
D

in MySQL-compatible model
Delphi

in MySQL-compatible model
Eiffel

in MySQL-compatible model
Erlang

in MySQL-compatible model
Haskell

in MySQL-compatible model
Java

in Oracle- and MySQL- compatible models
JavaScript (Node.js)

in MySQL-compatible model
Objective-C

in MySQL-compatible model
OCaml

in MySQL-compatible model
Perl

in MySQL-compatible model
PHP

in MySQL-compatible model
Python

in MySQL-compatible model
Ruby

in MySQL-compatible model
Scheme

in MySQL-compatible model
Tcl

in MySQL-compatible model

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

limited functionality with using 'rules'

PL/SQL in oracle-compatible mode, MySQL Stored Procedure in mysql-compatible mode

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"

none

horizontal partitioning (by hash, key, range, range columns, list, and list columns)

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

none

Repcached, a Memcached patch, provides this functionallity

Multi-source replication using Paxos

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

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.

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users can be defined per object

yes, based on authentication and database rules

yes

using SASL (Simple Authentication and Security Layer) protocol

Access rights for users, groups and roles 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.
» more

Licensing and pricing models

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