DBMS > Cassandra vs. FoundationDB vs. Google Cloud Datastore vs. Google Cloud Firestore vs. NuoDB

System Properties Comparison Cassandra vs. FoundationDB vs. Google Cloud Datastore vs. Google Cloud Firestore vs. NuoDB

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Created as commercial project in 2013, FoundationDB has been acquired by Apple in March 2015 and was withdrawn from the market. As a consequence, the product was removed from the DB-Engines ranking. In April 2018, Apple open-sourced FoundationDB and it therefore reappears in the ranking.

Description

Wide-column store based on ideas of BigTable and DynamoDB

Optimized for write access

Ordered key-value store. Core features are complimented by layers.

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

Cloud Firestore is an auto-scaling document database for storing, syncing, and querying data for mobile and web apps. It offers seamless integration with other Firebase and Google Cloud Platform products.

NuoDB is a webscale distributed database that supports SQL and ACID transactions

Primary database model

Wide column store

Document store

supported via specific layer
Key-value store
Relational DBMS

supported via specific SQL-layer

Document store

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	1.03
Rank	#190	Overall
	#31	Document stores
	#28	Key-value stores
	#89	Relational DBMS

Score	4.47
Rank	#76	Overall
	#12	Document stores

Score	7.85
Rank	#51	Overall
	#8	Document stores

Score	0.89
Rank	#198	Overall
	#92	Relational DBMS

Website

cassandra.apache.org

github.com/apple/foundationdb

cloud.google.com/datastore

firebase.google.com/products/firestore

www.3ds.com/nuodb-distributed-sql-database

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

apple.github.io/foundationdb

cloud.google.com/datastore/docs

firebase.google.com/docs/firestore

doc.nuodb.com

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

FoundationDB

Google

Dassault Systèmes

originally NuoDB, Inc.

Initial release

2008

2013

2008

2017

2013

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

6.2.28, November 2020

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

Apache 2.0

commercial

limited edition free

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

Linux
OS X
Windows

hosted

Amazon EC2, Windows Azure, SoftLayer
Linux
OS X
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

some layers support schemas

schema-free

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

some layers support typing

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.

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)

supported in specific SQL layer only

SQL-like query language (GQL)

yes

APIs and other access methods

Proprietary protocol

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

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

Android
gRPC (using protocol buffers) API
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC

Supported programming languages

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

.Net
C
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
PHP
Python
Ruby
Swift

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

Go
Java
JavaScript
JavaScript (Node.js)
Objective-C
Python

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

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

in SQL-layer only

using Google App Engine

yes, Firebase Rules & Cloud Functions

Java, SQL

Triggers

yes

Callbacks using the Google Apps Engine

yes, with Cloud Functions

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

Sharding

data is dynamically stored/cached on the nodes where it is read/written

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

yes

Multi-source replication using Paxos

Multi-source replication

yes

Managed transparently by NuoDB

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

using Google Cloud Dataflow

Using Cloud Dataflow

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

can be individually decided for each write operation

Linearizable consistency

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.

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

in SQL-layer only

yes

via ReferenceProperties or Ancestor paths

yes

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

yes

ACID

tunable commit protocol

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

MVCC

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

Temporary table

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users can be defined per object

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

Access rights for users, groups and roles based on Google Cloud Identity and Access Management. Security Rules for 3rd party authentication using Firebase Auth.

Standard SQL roles/ privileges, Administrative Users

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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