DBMS > Cassandra vs. FoundationDB vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. NuoDB vs. Trafodion

System Properties Comparison Cassandra vs. FoundationDB vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. NuoDB vs. Trafodion

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Created as commercial project in 2013, FoundationDB has been acquired by Apple in March 2015 and was withdrawn from the market.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

Apache Trafodion has been retired in 2021. Therefore it is excluded from the DB-Engines 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

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

Transactional SQL-on-Hadoop DBMS

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

Relational DBMS

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	29.04
Rank	#27	Overall
	#4	Document stores
	#2	Graph DBMS
	#3	Key-value stores
	#3	Wide column stores

Score	0.89
Rank	#198	Overall
	#92	Relational DBMS

Website

cassandra.apache.org

github.com/apple/foundationdb

azure.microsoft.com/services/cosmos-db

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

trafodion.apache.org

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

apple.github.io/foundationdb

learn.microsoft.com/azure/cosmos-db

doc.nuodb.com

trafodion.apache.org/documentation.html

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

FoundationDB

Microsoft

Dassault Systèmes

originally NuoDB, Inc.

Apache Software Foundation, originally developed by HP

Initial release

2008

2013

2014

2013

2014

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

6.2.28, November 2020

2.3.0, February 2019

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

Apache 2.0

commercial

limited edition free

Open Source

Apache 2.0

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++, Java

Server operating systems

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
OS X
Windows

hosted

Amazon EC2, Windows Azure, SoftLayer
Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux

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

JSON 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.

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

yes

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

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

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

All languages supporting JDBC/ODBC/ADO.Net

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

in SQL-layer only

JavaScript

Java, SQL

Java Stored Procedures

Triggers

yes

JavaScript

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

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

Sharding

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

Managed transparently by NuoDB

yes, via HBase

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

with Hadoop integration

Integration with Hadoop/HDInsight on Azure*

yes

via user defined functions and HBase

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

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

Multi-item ACID transactions with snapshot isolation within a partition

ACID

tunable commit protocol

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

MVCC

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

Temporary table

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users can be defined per object

Access rights can be defined down to the item level

Standard SQL roles/ privileges, Administrative Users

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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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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