DBMS > Cassandra vs. Firebird vs. InterSystems IRIS vs. NebulaGraph vs. TimesTen

System Properties Comparison Cassandra vs. Firebird vs. InterSystems IRIS vs. NebulaGraph vs. TimesTen

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

A containerised multi-model DBMS, interoperability and analytics data platform with wide capabilities for vertical and horizontal scalability

A distributed, linear scalable, high perfomant Graph DBMS

In-Memory RDBMS compatible to Oracle

Primary database model

Wide column store

Relational DBMS

Document store
Key-value store
Object oriented DBMS
Relational DBMS

Graph DBMS

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

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	4.05
Rank	#83	Overall
	#14	Document stores
	#10	Key-value stores
	#1	Object oriented DBMS
	#45	Relational DBMS

Score	2.14
Rank	#120	Overall
	#10	Graph DBMS

Score	1.31
Rank	#163	Overall
	#74	Relational DBMS

Website

cassandra.apache.org

www.firebirdsql.org

www.intersystems.com/products/intersystems-iris

github.com/vesoft-inc/nebula
www.nebula-graph.io

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

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

www.firebirdsql.org/en/reference-manuals

docs.intersystems.com/irislatest/csp/docbook/DocBook.UI.Page.cls

docs.nebula-graph.io

docs.oracle.com/database/timesten-18.1

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Firebird Foundation

InterSystems

Vesoft Inc.

Oracle, TimesTen Performance Software, HP

originally founded in HP Labs it was acquired by Oracle in 2005

Initial release

2008

2000

As fork of Borland's InterBase

2018

2019

1998

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

5.0.0, January 2024

2023.3, June 2023

11 Release 2 (11.2.2.8.0)

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

Initial Developer's Public License

commercial

Open Source

Apache Version 2.0 + Common Clause 1.0

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++

C++

Server operating systems

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

AIX
FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
server-less

Firebird Embedded Server
Solaris
Unix
Windows

AIX
Linux
macOS
Ubuntu
Windows

Linux

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
Solaris SPARC/x86
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

depending on used data model

Strong typed schema

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

Nebula Graph internally uses the Key-Value store RocksDB for persistency. The vertices, edges, and their properties are stored as Key while their values are stored as Value. The primary indexes are per Key and secondary indexes are per Value.

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

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

yes

SQL-like query language

yes

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
RESTful HTTP API

Browser interface
console (shell)
Cypher Query Language
GO Object Graph Mapper
Java Object Graph Mapper
NGBatis

ORM framework for NebulaGraph and Spring-Boot
Proprietary native API
Python Object Graph Mapper
Query language nGQL

JDBC
ODBC
ODP.NET
Oracle Call Interface (OCI)

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++
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

.Net
C++
Go
Java
PHP
Python

C
C++
Java
PL/SQL

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

PSQL

yes

user defined functions

PL/SQL

Triggers

yes

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

Causal Clustering using Raft protocol

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

Immediate Consistency or Eventual Consistency depending on configuration

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Relationships in graphs

yes

Transaction concepts

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

Atomicity and isolation are supported for single 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

using RocksDB

yes

by means of logfiles and checkpoints

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

yes

Role-based access control

fine grained access rights 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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InterSystems IRIS is a complete cloud-first data platform which includes a multi-model...
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NebulaGraph is a truly distributed, linearly scalable, lightning-fast graph database,...
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Competitive advantages

No single point of failure ensures 100% availability . Operational simplicity for...
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NebulaGraph boasts the world's only graph database solution that is able to host...
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Typical application scenarios

Internet of Things (IOT), fraud detection applications, recommendation engines, product...
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Social networking Fraud detection Knowledge graph Data warehouse management Anti...
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Key customers

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

Companies from a variety of industries have implemented NebulaGraph Database in production,...
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Market metrics

Cassandra is used by 40% of the Fortune 100.
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At our very early stage, NebulaGraph has already received over 10,000 stars on GitHub...
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Licensing and pricing models

Apache licenseÂ Pricing for commercial distributions provided by DataStax and available...
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NebulaGraph is open source and free to use under Apache 2.0 license.
» more

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