DBMS > Cassandra vs. FoundationDB vs. MongoDB

System Properties Comparison Cassandra vs. FoundationDB vs. MongoDB

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Created as commercial project in 2013, FoundationDB has been acquired by Apple in March 2015 and was withdrawn from the market.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

One of the most popular document stores available both as a fully managed cloud service and for deployment on self-managed infrastructure

Primary database model

Wide column store

Document store

supported via specific layer
Key-value store
Relational DBMS

supported via specific SQL-layer

Document store

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

Spatial DBMS
Search engine

integrated Lucene index, currently in MongoDB Atlas only.
Time Series DBMS

Time Series Collections introduced in Release 5.0
Vector DBMS

currently available in the MongoDB Atlas cloud service only

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	421.65
Rank	#5	Overall
	#1	Document stores

Website

cassandra.apache.org

github.com/apple/foundationdb

www.mongodb.com

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

apple.github.io/foundationdb

www.mongodb.com/docs/manual

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

FoundationDB

MongoDB, Inc

Initial release

2008

2013

2009

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

6.2.28, November 2020

6.0.7, June 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

MongoDB Inc.'s Server Side Public License v1. Prior versions were published under GNU AGPL v3.0. Commercial licenses are also available.

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

MongoDB available as DBaaS (MongoDB Atlas)

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.

MongoDB Atlas: Global multi-cloud database with unmatched data distribution and mobility across AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, built-in automation for resource and workload optimization, and so much more.

Implementation language

Java

C++

Server operating systems

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

some layers support schemas

schema-free

Although schema-free, documents of the same collection often follow the same structure. Optionally impose all or part of a schema by defining a JSON schema.

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

some layers support typing

yes

string, integer, double, decimal, boolean, date, object_id, geospatial

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

Read-only SQL queries via the MongoDB Atlas SQL Interface

APIs and other access methods

Proprietary protocol

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

GraphQL
HTTP REST
Prisma
proprietary protocol using JSON

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

Actionscript

unofficial driver
C
C#
C++
Clojure

unofficial driver
ColdFusion

unofficial driver
D

unofficial driver
Dart

unofficial driver
Delphi

unofficial driver
Erlang
Go
Groovy

unofficial driver
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Kotlin
Lisp

unofficial driver
Lua

unofficial driver
MatLab

unofficial driver
Perl
PHP
PowerShell

unofficial driver
Prolog

unofficial driver
Python
R

unofficial driver
Ruby
Rust
Scala
Smalltalk

unofficial driver
Swift

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

in SQL-layer only

JavaScript

Triggers

yes

in MongoDB Atlas only

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

Sharding

Partitioned by hashed, ranged, or zoned sharding keys. Live resharding allows users to change their shard keys as an online operation with zero downtime.

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

yes

Multi-Source deployments with MongoDB Atlas Global Clusters
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

Linearizable consistency

Eventual Consistency

can be individually decided for each read operation
Immediate Consistency

default behaviour

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

in SQL-layer only

typically not used, however similar functionality with DBRef possible

Transaction concepts

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

Atomicity and isolation are supported for single operations

ACID

Multi-document ACID Transactions with snapshot isolation

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

optional, enabled by default

In-memory capabilities

Is there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.

yes

In-memory storage engine introduced with MongoDB version 3.2

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users can be defined per object

Access rights for users and roles

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Apache Cassandra is the leading NoSQL, distributed database management system, well...
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MongoDB provides an integrated suite of cloud database and data services to accelerate...
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Competitive advantages

No single point of failure ensures 100% availability . Operational simplicity for...
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Built around the flexible document data model and unified API, MongoDB is a developer...
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Typical application scenarios

Internet of Things (IOT), fraud detection applications, recommendation engines, product...
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AI-enriched intelligent apps (Continental, Telefonica, Iron Mountain) Internet of...
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Key customers

Apple, Netflix, Uber, ING,, Intuit,Fidelity, NY Times, Outbrain, BazaarVoice, Best...
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ADP, Adobe, Amadeus, AstraZeneca, Auto Trader, Barclays, BBVA, Bosch, Cisco, CERN,...
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Market metrics

Cassandra is used by 40% of the Fortune 100.
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Hundreds of millions downloads, over 150,000+ Atlas clusters provisioned every month...
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Licensing and pricing models

Apache licenseÂ Pricing for commercial distributions provided by DataStax and available...
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MongoDB database server: Server-Side Public License (SSPL) . Commercial licenses...
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