DBMS > Cassandra vs. Geode vs. KeyDB vs. Memcached vs. Snowflake

System Properties Comparison Cassandra vs. Geode vs. KeyDB vs. Memcached vs. Snowflake

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Wide-column store based on ideas of BigTable and DynamoDB

Optimized for write access

Geode is a distributed data container, pooling memory, CPU, network resources, and optionally local disk across multiple processes

An ultra-fast, open source Key-value store fully compatible with Redis API, modules, and protocols

In-memory key-value store, originally intended for caching

Cloud-based data warehousing service for structured and semi-structured data

Primary database model

Wide column store

Key-value store

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

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

Score	98.83
Rank	#12	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	1.86
Rank	#134	Overall
	#24	Key-value stores

Score	0.70
Rank	#229	Overall
	#32	Key-value stores

Score	18.08
Rank	#32	Overall
	#4	Key-value stores

Score	130.36
Rank	#8	Overall
	#5	Relational DBMS

Website

cassandra.apache.org

geode.apache.org

github.com/Snapchat/KeyDB
keydb.dev

www.memcached.org

www.snowflake.com

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

geode.apache.org/docs

docs.keydb.dev

github.com/memcached/memcached/wiki

docs.snowflake.net/manuals/index.html

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Originally developed by Gemstone. They outsourced the project to Apache in 2015 but still deliver a commercial version as Gemfire.

EQ Alpha Technology Ltd.

Danga Interactive

originally developed by Brad Fitzpatrick for LiveJournal

Snowflake Computing Inc.

Initial release

2008

2002

2019

2003

2014

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

1.1, February 2017

1.6.27, May 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

Apache Version 2; commercial licenses available as Gemfire

Open Source

BSD-3

Open Source

BSD license

commercial

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++

Server operating systems

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

All OS with a Java VM

the JDK (8 or later) is also required

Linux

FreeBSD
Linux
OS X
Unix
Windows

hosted

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

support of semi-structured data formats (JSON, XML, Avro)

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

partial

Supported data types are strings, hashes, lists, sets and sorted sets, bit arrays, hyperloglogs and geospatial indexes

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

by using the Redis Search module

SQL

Support of SQL

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

SQL-like query language (OQL)

yes

APIs and other access methods

Proprietary protocol

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

Java Client API
Memcached protocol
RESTful HTTP API

Proprietary protocol

RESP - REdis Serialization Protoco

Proprietary protocol

CLI Client
JDBC
ODBC

Supported programming languages

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

.Net
All JVM based languages
C++
Groovy
Java
Scala

C
C#
C++
Clojure
Crystal
D
Dart
Elixir
Erlang
Fancy
Go
Haskell
Haxe
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Lisp
Lua
MatLab
Objective-C
OCaml
Pascal
Perl
PHP
Prolog
Pure Data
Python
R
Rebol
Ruby
Rust
Scala
Scheme
Smalltalk
Swift
Tcl
Visual Basic

.Net
C
C++
ColdFusion
Erlang
Java
Lisp
Lua
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

user defined functions

Lua

user defined functions

Triggers

yes

Cache Event Listeners

similar concept for controling cloud resources

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

Sharding

none

yes

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

Multi-source replication

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

none

Repcached, a Memcached patch, provides this functionallity

yes

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

Eventual Consistency

Eventual Consistency
Strong eventual consistency with CRDTs

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

yes, on a single node

Optimistic locking, atomic execution of commands blocks and scripts

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

Configurable mechanisms for persistency via snapshots and/or operations logs

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 per client and object definable

simple password-based access control and ACL

yes

using SASL (Simple Authentication and Security Layer) protocol

Users with fine-grained authorization concept, user roles and pluggable authentication

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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