DBMS > Cassandra vs. FoundationDB vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. NCache

System Properties Comparison Cassandra vs. FoundationDB vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. NCache

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Created as commercial project in 2013, FoundationDB has been acquired by Apple in March 2015 and was withdrawn from the market.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

Globally distributed, horizontally scalable, multi-model database service

Open-Source and Enterprise in-memory Key-Value Store

Primary database model

Wide column store

Document store

supported via specific layer
Key-value store
Relational DBMS

supported via specific SQL-layer

Document store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store
Wide column store

Key-value store

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

Spatial DBMS

Document store
Search engine

Using distributed Lucene

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

Score	98.83
Rank	#12	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	1.06
Rank	#185	Overall
	#31	Document stores
	#28	Key-value stores
	#85	Relational DBMS

Score	27.71
Rank	#27	Overall
	#4	Document stores
	#2	Graph DBMS
	#3	Key-value stores
	#3	Wide column stores

Score	0.96
Rank	#195	Overall
	#29	Key-value stores

Website

cassandra.apache.org

github.com/apple/foundationdb

azure.microsoft.com/services/cosmos-db

www.alachisoft.com/ncache

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

apple.github.io/foundationdb

learn.microsoft.com/azure/cosmos-db

www.alachisoft.com/resources/docs

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

FoundationDB

Microsoft

Alachisoft

Initial release

2008

2013

2014

2005

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

6.2.28, November 2020

5.3.3, April 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

Apache 2.0

commercial

Open Source

Enterprise Edition available

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++

C#, .NET, .NET Core, Java

Server operating systems

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
OS X
Windows

hosted

Linux
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

some layers support schemas

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

some layers support typing

yes

JSON types

partial

Supported data types are Lists, Queues, Hashsets, Dictionary and Counter

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

All properties auto-indexed by default

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

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

supported in specific SQL layer only

SQL-like query language

SQL-like query syntax and LINQ for searching the cache. Cache Synchronization with SQL Server using SQL dependency.

APIs and other access methods

Proprietary protocol

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

DocumentDB API
Graph API (Gremlin)
MongoDB API
RESTful HTTP API
Table API

IDistributedCache
JCache
LINQ
Proprietary native API

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
C#
Java
JavaScript
JavaScript (Node.js)
MongoDB client drivers written for various programming languages
Python

.Net
.Net Core
C#
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python
Scala

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

in SQL-layer only

JavaScript

support for stored procedures with SQL-Server CLR

Triggers

yes

JavaScript

yes

Notifications

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

yes

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

yes, with selectable consistency level

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

with Hadoop integration

Integration with Hadoop/HDInsight on Azure*

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

Bounded Staleness
Consistent Prefix
Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Consistency level configurable on request level
Session Consistency

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency
Strong Eventual Consistency over WAN with Conflict Resolution using Bridge Topology

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

in SQL-layer only

Transaction concepts

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

Atomicity and isolation are supported for single operations

ACID

Multi-item ACID transactions with snapshot isolation within a partition

optimistic locking and pessimistic locking

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

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

Access rights can be defined down to the item level

Authentication to access the cache via Active Directory/LDAP (possible roles: user, administrator)

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Apache Cassandra is the leading NoSQL, distributed database management system, well...
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NCache has been the market leader in .NET Distributed Caching since 2005 . NCache...
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Competitive advantages

No single point of failure ensures 100% availability . Operational simplicity for...
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NCache is 100% .NET/ .NET Core based which fully supports ASP.NET Core Sessions ,...
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Typical application scenarios

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

NCache enables industries like retail, finance, banking IoT, travel, ecommerce, healthcare...
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Key customers

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

Bank of America, Citi, Natures Way, Charter Spectrum, Barclays, Henry Schein, GBM,...
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Market metrics

Cassandra is used by 40% of the Fortune 100.
» more

Market Leader in .NET Distributed Caching since 2005.
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Licensing and pricing models

Apache licenseÂ Pricing for commercial distributions provided by DataStax and available...
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NCache Open Source is free on an as-is basis without any support. NCache Enterprise...
» more

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