DBMS > Cassandra vs. Firebird vs. HarperDB vs. HEAVY.AI vs. OpenEdge

System Properties Comparison Cassandra vs. Firebird vs. HarperDB vs. HEAVY.AI vs. OpenEdge

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

Ultra-low latency distributed database with an intuitive REST API supporting NoSQL and SQL (including joins). Deployment of functions and databases simultaneously with a consolidated node-level architecture.

A high performance, column-oriented RDBMS, specifically developed to harness the massive parallelism of modern CPU and GPU hardware

Application development environment with integrated database management system

Primary database model

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

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	20.82
Rank	#30	Overall
	#18	Relational DBMS

Score	0.55
Rank	#248	Overall
	#38	Document stores

Score	1.77
Rank	#141	Overall
	#65	Relational DBMS

Score	3.51
Rank	#86	Overall
	#46	Relational DBMS

Website

cassandra.apache.org

www.firebirdsql.org

www.harperdb.io

github.com/heavyai/heavydb
www.heavy.ai

www.progress.com/openedge

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

www.firebirdsql.org/en/reference-manuals

docs.harperdb.io/docs

docs.heavy.ai

documentation.progress.com/output/ua/OpenEdge_latest

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Firebird Foundation

HarperDB

HEAVY.AI, Inc.

Progress Software Corporation

Initial release

2008

2000

As fork of Borland's InterBase

2017

2016

1984

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

5.0.0, January 2024

3.1, August 2021

5.10, January 2022

OpenEdge 12.2, March 2020

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

Initial Developer's Public License

commercial

free community edition available

Open Source

Apache Version 2; enterprise edition available

commercial

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

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++

Node.js

C++ and CUDA

Server operating systems

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

AIX
FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
server-less

Firebird Embedded Server
Solaris
Unix
Windows

Linux
OS X

Linux

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
Solaris
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

dynamic schema

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

JSON data 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.

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

SQL-like data manipulation statements

yes

close to SQL 92

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

JDBC
ODBC
React Hooks
RESTful HTTP/JSON API
WebSocket

JDBC
ODBC
Thrift
Vega

JDBC
ODBC

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
C
C#
C++
ColdFusion
D
Dart
Delphi
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Lisp
MatLab
Objective C
Perl
PHP
PowerShell
Prolog
Python
R
Ruby
Rust
Scala
Swift

All languages supporting JDBC/ODBC/Thrift
Python

Progress proprietary ABL (Advanced Business Language)

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

PSQL

Custom Functions

since release 3.1

yes

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

none

A table resides as a whole on one (or more) nodes in a cluster

Sharding

Round robin

horizontal partitioning

since Version 11.4

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

the nodes on which a table resides can be defined

Multi-source replication

Source-replica replication

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

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

ACID

Atomic execution of specific operations

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

yes, using LMDB

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 and roles

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Users and groups

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

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

Competitive advantages

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

Typical application scenarios

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

Key customers

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

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...
» more

News

How Concide Built its Chat Platform with Enhanced Document Management for Legal Tech Professionals
23 May 2024

Astra Vectorize: Generate Vector Embeddings with 1 Line of Code
22 May 2024

GitHub Copilot + DataStax Astra DB: Build GenAI Apps 100x Faster
21 May 2024

Empowering On-Premises Deployments with Generative AI: Introducing Vector Search for a Self-Managed Modern Architecture
15 May 2024

Tips and Tricks for the DataStax Astra CLI
7 May 2024

We invite representatives of system vendors to contact us for updating and extending the system information,
and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.