DBMS > Cassandra vs. Google Cloud Firestore vs. PostgreSQL vs. RethinkDB vs. SAP SQL Anywhere
System Properties Comparison Cassandra vs. Google Cloud Firestore vs. PostgreSQL vs. RethinkDB vs. SAP SQL Anywhere
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| Name | Cassandra Xexclude from comparison | Google Cloud Firestore Xexclude from comparison | PostgreSQL Xexclude from comparison | RethinkDB Xexclude from comparison | SAP SQL Anywhere  formerly called Adaptive Server Anywhere Xexclude from comparison | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Description | Wide-column store based on ideas of BigTable and DynamoDB Optimized for write access | Cloud Firestore is an auto-scaling document database for storing, syncing, and querying data for mobile and web apps. It offers seamless integration with other Firebase and Google Cloud Platform products. | Widely used open source RDBMS Developed as objectoriented DBMS (Postgres), gradually enhanced with 'standards' like SQL | DBMS for the Web with a mechanism to push updated query results to applications in realtime. | RDBMS database and synchronization technologies for server, desktop, remote office, and mobile environments | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Primary database model | Wide column store | Document store | Relational DBMS with object oriented extensions, e.g.: user defined types/functions and inheritance. Handling of key/value pairs with hstore module. | Document store | Relational DBMS | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Secondary database models | Vector DBMS starting with release V5 | Document store Graph DBMS with Apache AgeSpatial DBMS Vector DBMS with pgvector extension | Spatial DBMS | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Website | cassandra.apache.org | firebase.google.com/products/firestore | www.postgresql.org | rethinkdb.com | www.sap.com/products/technology-platform/sql-anywhere.html | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Technical documentation | cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest | firebase.google.com/docs/firestore | www.postgresql.org/docs | rethinkdb.com/docs | help.sap.com/docs/SAP_SQL_Anywhere | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Developer | Apache Software Foundation Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook | PostgreSQL Global Development Group www.postgresql.org/developer | The Linux Foundation since July 2017 | SAP formerly Sybase | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Initial release | 2008 | 2017 | 1989 1989: Postgres, 1996: PostgreSQL | 2009 | 1992 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Current release | 4.1.3, July 2023 | 16.2, February 2024 | 2.4.1, August 2020 | 17, July 2015 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| License Commercial or Open Source | Open Source Apache version 2 | commercial | Open Source BSD | Open Source Apache Version 2 | commercial | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Cloud-based only Only available as a cloud service | no | yes | no | no | no | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 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. | Aiven for PostgreSQL: Fully managed PostgreSQL for developers with 70+ extensions and flexible orchestration tools. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Implementation language | Java | C | C++ | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Server operating systems | BSD Linux OS X Windows | hosted | FreeBSD HP-UX Linux NetBSD OpenBSD OS X Solaris Unix Windows | Linux OS X Windows | AIX HP-UX Linux OS X Solaris Windows | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Data scheme | schema-free | schema-free | yes | schema-free | yes | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Typing predefined data types such as float or date | yes | yes | yes | yes string, binary, float, bool, date, geometry | 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. | no | no | yes specific XML-type available, but no XML query functionality. | no | yes | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Secondary indexes | restricted only equality queries, not always the best performing solution | yes | yes | yes | yes | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| SQL Support of SQL | SQL-like SELECT, DML and DDL statements (CQL) | no | yes standard with numerous extensions | no | yes | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| APIs and other access methods | Proprietary protocol CQL (Cassandra Query Language, an SQL-like language) Thrift | Android gRPC (using protocol buffers) API iOS JavaScript API RESTful HTTP API | ADO.NET JDBC native C library ODBC streaming API for large objects | ADO.NET HTTP API JDBC ODBC | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Supported programming languages | C# C++ Clojure Erlang Go Haskell Java JavaScript Node.jsPerl PHP Python Ruby Scala | Go Java JavaScript JavaScript (Node.js) Objective-C Python | .Net C C++ Delphi Java JDBCJavaScript (Node.js) Perl PHP Python Tcl | C community-supported driver C# community-supported driverC++ community-supported driverClojure community-supported driverDart community-supported driverErlang community-supported driverGo community-supported driverHaskell community-supported driverJava official driverJavaScript (Node.js) official driverLisp community-supported driverLua community-supported driverObjective-C community-supported driverPerl community-supported driverPHP community-supported driverPython official driverRuby official driverScala community-supported driver | C C# C++ Delphi Java JavaScript (Node.js) Perl PHP Python Ruby | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Server-side scripts Stored procedures | no | yes, Firebase Rules & Cloud Functions | user defined functions realized in proprietary language PL/pgSQL or with common languages like Perl, Python, Tcl etc. | yes, in C/C++, Java, .Net or Perl | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Triggers | yes | yes, with Cloud Functions | yes | Client-side triggers through changefeeds | yes | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Partitioning methods Methods for storing different data on different nodes | Sharding no "single point of failure" | Sharding | partitioning by range, list and (since PostgreSQL 11) by hash | Sharding range based | none | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Replication methods Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes | selectable replication factor Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible | Multi-source replication | Source-replica replication other methods possible by using 3rd party extensions | Source-replica replication | Source-replica replication Database mirroring | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| MapReduce Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods | yes | Using Cloud Dataflow | no | yes | no | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Consistency concepts Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system | Eventual Consistency Immediate Consistency can be individually decided for each write operation | Immediate Consistency | Immediate Consistency | Immediate Consistency | Immediate Consistency | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Foreign keys Referential integrity | no | no | yes | no | yes | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Transaction concepts Support to ensure data integrity after non-atomic manipulations of data | no Atomicity and isolation are supported for single operations | yes | ACID | Atomic single-document operations | ACID | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Concurrency Support for concurrent manipulation of data | yes | yes | yes | yes MVCC based | yes | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Durability Support for making data persistent | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| In-memory capabilities Is there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only. | no | no | no | yes | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| User concepts Access control | Access rights for users can be defined per object | Access rights for users, groups and roles based on Google Cloud Identity and Access Management. Security Rules for 3rd party authentication using Firebase Auth. | fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard | yes users and table-level permissions | fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| More information provided by the system vendor | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Cassandra | Google Cloud Firestore | PostgreSQL | RethinkDB | SAP SQL Anywhere formerly called Adaptive Server Anywhere | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Specific characteristics | Apache Cassandra is the leading NoSQL, distributed database management system, well... » more | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Competitive advantages | No single point of failure ensures 100% availability . Operational simplicity for... » more | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Typical application scenarios | Internet of Things (IOT), fraud detection applications, recommendation engines, product... » more | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Key customers | Apple, Netflix, Uber, ING,, Intuit,Fidelity, NY Times, Outbrain, BazaarVoice, Best... » more | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Market metrics | Cassandra is used by 40% of the Fortune 100. » more | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Licensing and pricing models | Apache license Pricing for commercial distributions provided by DataStax and available... » more | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| News | How Winweb Built its AI Assistant with DataStax Astra DB and LangChain Vercel + Astra DB: Get Data into Your GenAI Apps Fast Simplifying Agent Development with Astra DB Connector for Vertex AI Search Making Astra DB easier for MongoDB developers Empowering Enterprise GenAI: Announcing Luna for RAGStack | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| 3rd parties | Cassandra Forward event: Want to level up your Cassandra game? Watch now replays of the March 2023 sessions. » more CData: Connect to Big Data & NoSQL through standard Drivers. » more | Fujitsu Enterprise Postgres: An Enterprise Grade PostgreSQL with the flexibility of a hybrid cloud solution combined with industry leading security, availability and performance.
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| More resources | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Cassandra | Google Cloud Firestore | PostgreSQL | RethinkDB | SAP SQL Anywhere formerly called Adaptive Server Anywhere | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| DB-Engines blog posts | Cassandra keeps climbing the ranks of the DB-Engines Ranking Oracle is the DBMS of the Year Winners, losers and an attractive newcomer in Novembers DB-Engines ranking | Cloud-based DBMS's popularity grows at high rates | PostgreSQL is the DBMS of the Year 2023 Snowflake is the DBMS of the Year 2022, defending the title from last year Snowflake is the DBMS of the Year 2021 | Meet some database management systems you are likely to hear more about in the future | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Conferences, events and webinars | Monitoring PostgreSQL with Redgate Monitor | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Recent citations in the news | Here's What to Know About Apache Cassandra 5.0 What Is Cassandra? Working, Features, and Uses - Spiceworks How Uber Optimized Cassandra Operations At Scale Cassandra is the “best f*cking database for gen AI,” says DataStax CEO Microsoft extends life support for aging Apache Cassandra 3.11 database provided by Google News | Realtime vs Cloud Firestore: Which Firebase Database to go? Google's AI-First Strategy Brings Vector Support To Cloud Databases Google’s Firebase gets AI extensions, opens up its marketplace Essentials for Working With Firestore in Python | by Lynn G. Kwong Google Cloud Firestore, the serverless, NoSQL document database, is now generally available provided by Google News | pgEdge Distributed PostgreSQL Introduces Automatic DDL Replication and Snowflake Sequences for Postgres Modernize your data architecture using Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL and Amazon QuickSight | Amazon Web Services Introducing OCI Database with PostgreSQL: Completing Our Cloud Database Suite for Every Need Oracle Introduces PostgreSQL Running Native on OCI General availability: Microsoft Entra ID integration with Azure Cosmos DB for PostgreSQL | Azure updates provided by Google News | An introduction to building realtime apps with RethinkDB Stripe acquires team behind NoSQL database startup RethinkDB Realtime App Development with RethinkDB and React Native — SitePoint MongoDB: The Popular Database for IoT RethinkDB is dead, and MongoDB isn't what killed it provided by Google News | Newsbyte: Latest Release of SAP® SQL Anywhere® Suite Brings Mission-Critical Services to the Internet of Things and ... SAP vulnerabilities Let Attacker Inject OS Commands—Patch Now! SAP Again Named a Leader in 2021 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Cloud Database Management Systems Rimini Street expands support beyond SAP and Oracle AWS, IBM, Microsoft, Google emerge Cloud DBMS leaders provided by Google News | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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