DBMS > Apache Cassandra vs. Google Cloud Spanner vs. Hazelcast vs. Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics

System Properties Comparison Apache Cassandra vs. Google Cloud Spanner vs. Hazelcast vs. Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics

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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.

A widely adopted in-memory data grid

Elastic, large scale data warehouse service leveraging the broad eco-system of SQL Server

Primary database model

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

Document store

JSON support with IMDG 3.12

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

Score	98.94
Rank	#11	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	2.69
Rank	#101	Overall
	#51	Relational DBMS

Score	5.72
Rank	#59	Overall
	#6	Key-value stores

Score	18.98
Rank	#31	Overall
	#19	Relational DBMS

Website

cassandra.apache.org

cloud.google.com/spanner

hazelcast.com

azure.microsoft.com/services/synapse-analytics

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

cloud.google.com/spanner/docs

hazelcast.org/imdg/docs

docs.microsoft.com/azure/synapse-analytics

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Google

Hazelcast

Microsoft

Initial release

2008

2017

2008

2016

Current release

5.0-rc1, July 2024

5.3.6, November 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

commercial

Open Source

Apache Version 2; commercial licenses available

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

hosted

All OS with a Java VM

hosted

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

the object must implement a serialization strategy

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

Query statements complying to ANSI 2011

SQL-like query language

yes

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

JCache
JPA
Memcached protocol
RESTful HTTP API

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC

Supported programming languages

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

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

C#
Java
PHP

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

Event Listeners, Executor Services

Transact SQL

Triggers

yes

Events

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

Sharding

Sharding, horizontal partitioning

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.

yes

Replicated Map

yes

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

using Google Cloud Dataflow

yes

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 or Eventual Consistency selectable by user

Raft Consensus Algorithm

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

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

docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/synapse-analytics/sql-data-warehouse/sql-data-warehouse-table-constraints

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

one or two-phase-commit; repeatable reads; read commited

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

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)

Role-based access control

yes

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

Apache 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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