DBMS > Cassandra vs. GigaSpaces vs. IBM Cloudant vs. Informix vs. OrientDB

System Properties Comparison Cassandra vs. GigaSpaces vs. IBM Cloudant vs. Informix vs. OrientDB

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Wide-column store based on ideas of BigTable and DynamoDB

Optimized for write access

High performance in-memory data grid platform, powering three products: Smart Cache, Smart ODS (Operational Data Store), Smart Augmented Transactions

Database as a Service offering based on Apache CouchDB

A secure embeddable database from IBM, positioned besides IBM Db2 as a relatively low-cost product optimized for OLTP and Internet of Things data

Multi-model DBMS (Document, Graph, Key/Value)

Primary database model

Wide column store

Document store
Object oriented DBMS

Values are user defined objects

Document store

Relational DBMS

Since Version 12.10 support for JSON/BSON datatypes compatible with MongoDB

Document store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

Graph DBMS
Search engine

Document store
Spatial DBMS
Time Series DBMS

with Informix TimeSeries Extension

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

Score	98.83
Rank	#12	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	1.03
Rank	#188	Overall
	#32	Document stores
	#6	Object oriented DBMS

Score	2.75
Rank	#104	Overall
	#19	Document stores

Score	17.12
Rank	#34	Overall
	#21	Relational DBMS

Score	3.25
Rank	#89	Overall
	#16	Document stores
	#6	Graph DBMS
	#13	Key-value stores

Website

cassandra.apache.org

www.gigaspaces.com

www.ibm.com/products/cloudant

www.ibm.com/products/informix

orientdb.org

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

docs.gigaspaces.com/latest/landing.html

cloud.ibm.com/docs/Cloudant

informix.hcldoc.com
www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SSGU8G/welcomeIfxServers.html

www.orientdb.com/docs/last/index.html

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Gigaspaces Technologies

IBM, Apache Software Foundation

IBM acquired Cloudant in February 2014

IBM, HCL Technologies

Effective May 1st, 2017, HCL took on development, technical support, and product management teams, and works jointly with IBM on product strategy, marketing, and sales.

OrientDB LTD; CallidusCloud; SAP

Initial release

2008

2000

2010

1984

2010

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

15.5, September 2020

14.10.FC5, November 2020

3.2.29, March 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

Apache Version 2; Commercial licenses available

commercial

free developer edition available

Open Source

Apache version 2

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

Java, C++, .Net

Erlang

C, C++ and Java

Java

Server operating systems

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
macOS
Solaris
Windows

hosted

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
macOS
Solaris
Windows

All OS with a Java JDK (>= JDK 6)

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free

Schema can be enforced for whole record ("schema-full") or for some fields only ("schema-hybrid")

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

Since Version 12.10 support for JSON/BSON datatypes

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.

XML can be used for describing objects metadata

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)

SQL-99 for query and DML statements

yes

SQL-like query language, no joins

APIs and other access methods

Proprietary protocol

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

GigaSpaces LRMI
Hibernate
JCache
JDBC
JPA
ODBC
RESTful HTTP API
Spring Data

RESTful HTTP/JSON API

JDBC
JSON API

MongoDB compatible
MQTT (Message Queue Telemetry Transport)
ODBC
RESTful HTTP API

Tinkerpop technology stack with Blueprints, Gremlin, Pipes
Java API
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Supported programming languages

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

.Net
C++
Java
Python
Scala

C#
Java
JavaScript
Objective-C
PHP
Ruby

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

.Net
C
C#
C++
Clojure
Java
JavaScript
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

View functions (Map-Reduce) in JavaScript

yes

Java, Javascript

Triggers

yes

yes, event driven architecture

yes

Hooks

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

Multi-source replication

synchronous or asynchronous
Source-replica replication

synchronous or asynchronous

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

Multi-source replication

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

Map-Reduce pattern can be built with XAP task executors

yes

could be achieved with distributed queries

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

can be individually decided for each write operation

Immediate Consistency

Consistency level configurable: ALL, QUORUM, ANY

Eventual Consistency

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

relationship in graphs

Transaction concepts

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

Atomicity and isolation are supported for single operations

ACID

atomic operations within a document possible

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Optimistic locking

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

Role-based access control

Access rights for users can be defined per database

Users with fine-grained authentication, authorization, and auditing controls

Access rights for users and roles; record level security configurable

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.
» more

Licensing and pricing models

Apache licenseÂ Pricing for commercial distributions provided by DataStax and available...
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