DBMS > Cassandra vs. FoundationDB vs. H2 vs. MaxDB vs. RDF4J

System Properties Comparison Cassandra vs. FoundationDB vs. H2 vs. MaxDB vs. RDF4J

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Created as commercial project in 2013, FoundationDB has been acquired by Apple in March 2015 and was withdrawn from the market.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.

Full-featured RDBMS with a small footprint, either embedded into a Java application or used as a database server.

A robust and reliable RDBMS optimized to run all major SAP solutions

RDF4J is a Java framework for processing RDF data, supporting both memory-based and a disk-based storage.

Primary database model

Wide column store

Document store

supported via specific layer
Key-value store
Relational DBMS

supported via specific SQL-layer

Relational DBMS

RDF store

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

Score	8.13
Rank	#49	Overall
	#31	Relational DBMS

Score	2.32
Rank	#112	Overall
	#55	Relational DBMS

Score	0.69
Rank	#230	Overall
	#9	RDF stores

Website

cassandra.apache.org

github.com/apple/foundationdb

www.h2database.com

maxdb.sap.com

rdf4j.org

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

apple.github.io/foundationdb

www.h2database.com/html/main.html

maxdb.sap.com/documentation

rdf4j.org/documentation

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

FoundationDB

Thomas Mueller

SAP, acquired from Software AG (Adabas-D) in 1997

Since 2016 officially forked into an Eclipse project, former developer was Aduna Software.

Initial release

2008

2013

2005

1984

2004

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

6.2.28, November 2020

2.2.220, July 2023

7.9.10.12, February 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

dual-licence (Mozilla public license, Eclipse public license)

commercial

Limited community edition free

Open Source

Eclipse Distribution License (EDL), v1.0.

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++

Java

C++

Java

Server operating systems

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
OS X
Windows

All OS with a Java VM

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
Solaris
Windows

Linux
OS X
Unix
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

some layers support schemas

yes

RDF Schemas

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

some layers support typing

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

yes

APIs and other access methods

Proprietary protocol

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

JDBC
ODBC

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
WebDAV

Java API
RIO

RDF Input/Output
Sail API
SeRQL

Sesame RDF Query Language
Sesame REST HTTP Protocol
SPARQL

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

Java

.Net
C#
Java
Perl
PHP
Python

Java
PHP
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

in SQL-layer only

Java Stored Procedures and User-Defined Functions

yes

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

Sharding

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

yes

With clustering: 2 database servers on different computers operate on identical copies of a database

Source-replica replication

none

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

Linearizable consistency

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

in SQL-layer only

yes

Transaction concepts

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

Atomicity and isolation are supported for single operations

ACID

Isolation support depends on the API used

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

yes, multi-version concurrency control (MVCC)

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

in-memory storage is supported as well

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

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...
» 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

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.