DBMS > Cassandra vs. GeoMesa vs. Microsoft Azure Table Storage vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. NuoDB

System Properties Comparison Cassandra vs. GeoMesa vs. Microsoft Azure Table Storage vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. NuoDB

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Wide-column store based on ideas of BigTable and DynamoDB

Optimized for write access

GeoMesa is a distributed spatio-temporal DBMS based on various systems as storage layer.

A Wide Column Store for rapid development using massive semi-structured datasets

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

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

Primary database model

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

Document store
Graph DBMS
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	0.78
Rank	#213	Overall
	#4	Spatial DBMS

Score	4.48
Rank	#75	Overall
	#6	Wide column stores

Score	824.29
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	0.89
Rank	#198	Overall
	#92	Relational DBMS

Website

cassandra.apache.org

www.geomesa.org

azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/storage/tables

www.microsoft.com/en-us/sql-server

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

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

www.geomesa.org/documentation/stable/user/index.html

learn.microsoft.com/en-US/sql/sql-server

doc.nuodb.com

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

CCRi and others

Microsoft

Dassault Systèmes

originally NuoDB, Inc.

Initial release

2008

2014

2012

1989

2013

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

4.0.5, February 2024

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

Apache License 2.0

commercial

restricted free version is available

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

Scala

C++

Server operating systems

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

hosted

Linux
Windows

hosted

Amazon EC2, Windows Azure, SoftLayer
Linux
OS X
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

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.

yes

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)

yes

APIs and other access methods

Proprietary protocol

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

RESTful HTTP API

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
OLE DB
Tabular Data Stream (TDS)

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++
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby

C#
C++
Delphi
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Visual Basic

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

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

Transact SQL, .NET languages, R, Python and (with SQL Server 2019) Java

Java, SQL

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

depending on storage layer

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

tables can be distributed across several files (horizontal partitioning); sharding through federation

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

depending on storage layer

yes

implicit feature of the cloud service. Replication either local, cross-facility or geo-redundant.

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

yes

Managed transparently by NuoDB

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

depending on storage layer

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

Atomicity and isolation are supported for single operations

optimistic locking

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.

depending on storage layer

yes

Temporary table

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users can be defined per object

yes

depending on the DBMS used for storage

Access rights based on private key authentication or shared access signatures

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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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