DBMS > Apache Cassandra vs. Firebird vs. Google Cloud Datastore vs. Heroic vs. Stardog

System Properties Comparison Apache Cassandra vs. Firebird vs. Google Cloud Datastore vs. Heroic vs. Stardog

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Wide-column store based on ideas of BigTable and DynamoDB

Optimized for write access

Firebird is an open source RDBMS forked from Borland's InterBase

Automatically scaling NoSQL Database as a Service (DBaaS) on the Google Cloud Platform

Time Series DBMS built at Spotify based on Cassandra or Google Cloud Bigtable, and ElasticSearch

Enterprise Knowledge Graph platform and graph DBMS with high availability, high performance reasoning, and virtualization

Primary database model

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

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

Score	98.94
Rank	#11	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	19.46
Rank	#30	Overall
	#18	Relational DBMS

Score	4.13
Rank	#71	Overall
	#12	Document stores

Score	0.13
Rank	#335	Overall
	#29	Time Series DBMS

Score	1.93
Rank	#121	Overall
	#10	Graph DBMS
	#6	RDF stores

Website

cassandra.apache.org

www.firebirdsql.org

cloud.google.com/datastore

github.com/spotify/heroic

www.stardog.com

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

www.firebirdsql.org/en/reference-manuals

cloud.google.com/datastore/docs

spotify.github.io/heroic

docs.stardog.com

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Firebird Foundation

Google

Spotify

Stardog-Union

Initial release

2008

2000

As fork of Borland's InterBase

2008

2014

2010

Current release

5.0-rc1, July 2024

5.0.1, August 2024

7.3.0, May 2020

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

Initial Developer's Public License

commercial

Open Source

Apache 2.0

commercial

60-day fully-featured trial license; 1-year fully-featured non-commercial use license for academics/students

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++

Java

Server operating systems

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

AIX
FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
server-less

Firebird Embedded Server
Solaris
Unix
Windows

hosted

Linux
macOS
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free

schema-free and OWL/RDFS-schema support

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

yes, details here

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.

Import/export of XML data possible

Secondary indexes

restricted

only equality queries, not always the best performing solution

yes

via Elasticsearch

yes

supports real-time indexing in full-text and geospatial

SQL

Support of SQL

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

yes

SQL-like query language (GQL)

Yes, compatible with all major SQL variants through dedicated BI/SQL Server

APIs and other access methods

Proprietary protocol

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

ADO.NET
C/C++ API
JDBC

Jaybird
ODBC
OLE DB

gRPC (using protocol buffers) API
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

HQL (Heroic Query Language, a JSON-based language)
HTTP API

GraphQL query language
HTTP API
Jena RDF API
OWL
RDF4J API
Sesame REST HTTP Protocol
SNARL
SPARQL
Spring Data
Stardog Studio
TinkerPop 3

Supported programming languages

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

C
C#
C++
Delphi
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Lua
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

.Net
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby

.Net
Clojure
Groovy
Java
JavaScript
Python
Ruby

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

PSQL

using Google App Engine

user defined functions and aggregates, HTTP Server extensions in Java

Triggers

yes

Callbacks using the Google Apps Engine

yes

via event handlers

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

none

Sharding

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

Source-replica replication

Multi-source replication using Paxos

yes

Multi-source replication in HA-Cluster

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

using Google Cloud Dataflow

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

can be individually decided for each write operation

Immediate Consistency or Eventual Consistency depending on type of query and configuration

Strong Consistency is default for entity lookups and queries within an Entity Group (but can instead be made eventually consistent). Other queries are always eventual consistent.

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Immediate Consistency in HA-Cluster

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

via ReferenceProperties or Ancestor paths

yes

relationships in graphs

Transaction concepts

Support to ensure data integrity after non-atomic manipulations of data

Atomicity and isolation are supported for single operations

ACID

Serializable Isolation within Transactions, Read Committed outside of Transactions

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Features a multi-generational MVCC architecture, readers do not block writers

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

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

Access rights for users, groups and roles based on Google Cloud Identity and Access Management (IAM)

Access rights for users and roles

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

Apache 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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