DBMS > Cassandra vs. Google Cloud Spanner vs. Graphite vs. Memcached vs. Solr

System Properties Comparison Cassandra vs. Google Cloud Spanner vs. Graphite vs. Memcached vs. Solr

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Wide-column store based on ideas of BigTable and DynamoDB

Optimized for write access

A horizontally scalable, globally consistent, relational database service. It is the externalization of the core Google database that runs the biggest aspects of Google, like Ads and Google Play.

Data logging and graphing tool for time series data

The storage layer (fixed size database) is called Whisper

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

A widely used distributed, scalable search engine based on Apache Lucene

Primary database model

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

Spatial DBMS

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

Score	98.83
Rank	#12	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	2.84
Rank	#100	Overall
	#51	Relational DBMS

Score	4.83
Rank	#67	Overall
	#4	Time Series DBMS

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

Score	41.02
Rank	#24	Overall
	#3	Search engines

Website

cassandra.apache.org

cloud.google.com/spanner

github.com/graphite-project/graphite-web

www.memcached.org

solr.apache.org

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

cloud.google.com/spanner/docs

graphite.readthedocs.io

github.com/memcached/memcached/wiki

solr.apache.org/resources.html

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Google

Chris Davis

Danga Interactive

originally developed by Brad Fitzpatrick for LiveJournal

Apache Software Foundation

Initial release

2008

2017

2006

2003

2006

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

1.6.27, May 2024

9.6.1, May 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

commercial

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

BSD license

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

Python

Java

Server operating systems

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

hosted

Linux
Unix

FreeBSD
Linux
OS X
Unix
Windows

All OS with a Java VM

runs as a servlet in servlet container (e.g. Tomcat, Jetty is included)

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free

yes

Dynamic Fields enables on-the-fly addition of new fields

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

Numeric data only

yes

supports customizable data types and automatic typing

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

All search fields are automatically indexed

SQL

Support of SQL

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

yes

Query statements complying to ANSI 2011

Solr Parallel SQL Interface

APIs and other access methods

Proprietary protocol

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

gRPC (using protocol buffers) API
JDBC

At present, JDBC supports read-only queries. No support for DDL or DML statements.
RESTful HTTP API

HTTP API
Sockets

Proprietary protocol

Java API
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Supported programming languages

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

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

.Net
Erlang
Java
JavaScript
any language that supports sockets and either XML or JSON
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

Java plugins

Triggers

yes

User configurable commands triggered on index changes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

Sharding

none

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 with 3 replicas for regional instances.

none

Repcached, a Memcached patch, provides this functionallity

yes

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

using Google Cloud Dataflow

spark-solr: github.com/lucidworks/spark-solr and streaming expressions to reduce

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

can be individually decided for each write operation

Immediate Consistency

none

Eventual Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

by using interleaved tables, this features focuses more on performance improvements than on referential integrity

Transaction concepts

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

Atomicity and isolation are supported for single operations

ACID

Strict serializable isolation

optimistic locking

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

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

Access rights for users, groups and roles based on Google Cloud Identity and Access Management (IAM)

yes

using SASL (Simple Authentication and Security Layer) protocol

yes

More information provided by the system vendor

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...
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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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