DBMS > Cassandra vs. Google Cloud Spanner vs. LevelDB vs. Quasardb vs. YugabyteDB

System Properties Comparison Cassandra vs. Google Cloud Spanner vs. LevelDB vs. Quasardb vs. YugabyteDB

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.

Embeddable fast key-value storage library that provides an ordered mapping from string keys to string values

Distributed, high-performance timeseries database

High-performance distributed SQL database for global, internet-scale applications. Wire and feature compatible with PostgreSQL.

Primary database model

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

Document store
Wide column store

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

Score	101.89
Rank	#12	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	2.89
Rank	#103	Overall
	#52	Relational DBMS

Score	2.35
Rank	#111	Overall
	#19	Key-value stores

Score	0.14
Rank	#332	Overall
	#29	Time Series DBMS

Score	2.91
Rank	#102	Overall
	#51	Relational DBMS

Website

cassandra.apache.org

cloud.google.com/spanner

github.com/google/leveldb

quasar.ai

www.yugabyte.com

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

cloud.google.com/spanner/docs

github.com/google/leveldb/blob/main/doc/index.md

doc.quasar.ai/master

docs.yugabyte.com
github.com/yugabyte/yugabyte-db

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Google

quasardb

Yugabyte Inc.

Initial release

2008

2017

2011

2009

2017

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

1.23, February 2021

3.14.1, January 2024

2.19, September 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

commercial

Open Source

BSD

commercial

Free community edition, Non-profit organizations and non-commercial usage are eligible for free licenses

Open Source

Apache 2.0

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.

YugabyteDB Managed is the fully managed database-as-a-service offering of YugabyteDB. Get started quickly, and effortlessly ensure continuous availability and limitless scale of your cloud native applications.

Implementation language

Java

C++

C and C++

Server operating systems

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

hosted

Illumos
Linux
OS X
Windows

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
OS X

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free

depending on used data model

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

integer and binary

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.

Secondary indexes

restricted

only equality queries, not always the best performing solution

yes

with tags

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, PostgreSQL compatible

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

JDBC
YCQL, an SQL-based flexible-schema API with its roots in Cassandra Query Language
YSQL - a fully relational SQL API that is wire compatible with the SQL language in PostgreSQL

Supported programming languages

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

C++
Go
Java

3rd party binding
JavaScript (Node.js)

3rd party binding
Python

3rd party binding

.Net
C
C#
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
R

C
C#
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby
Rust
Scala

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

sql, plpgsql, C

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

Sharding

none

Sharding

consistent hashing

Hash and Range Sharding, row-level geo-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.

none

Source-replica replication with selectable replication factor

Based on Raft distributed consensus protocol, minimum 3 replicas for continuous availability

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

using Google Cloud Dataflow

with Hadoop integration

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

can be individually decided for each write operation

Immediate Consistency

Strong consistency on writes and tunable consistency on reads

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

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

yes

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

ACID

Distributed ACID with Serializable & Snapshot Isolation. Inspired by Google Spanner architecture.

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

with automatic compression on writes

yes

by using LevelDB

yes

based on RocksDB

In-memory capabilities

Is there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.

yes

Transient mode

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)

Cryptographically strong user authentication and audit trail

yes

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Apache Cassandra is the leading NoSQL, distributed database management system, well...
» more

YugabyteDB is an open source distributed SQL database for cloud native transactional...
» more

Competitive advantages

No single point of failure ensures 100% availability . Operational simplicity for...
» more

PostgreSQL compatible: Get instantly productive with a PostgreSQL compatible RDBMS....
» more

Typical application scenarios

Internet of Things (IOT), fraud detection applications, recommendation engines, product...
» more

Systems of record and engagement for cloud native applications that require resilience,...
» 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

2 Million+ lifetime clusters deployed, 6.5K+ GitHub stars, 7K YugabyteDB Community...
» more

Licensing and pricing models

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

Apache 2.0 license for the database
» more

News

GitHub Copilot + DataStax Astra DB: Build GenAI Apps 100x Faster
21 May 2024

Empowering On-Premises Deployments with Generative AI: Introducing Vector Search for a Self-Managed Modern Architecture
15 May 2024

Tips and Tricks for the DataStax Astra CLI
7 May 2024

How to Build a Crystal Image Search App with Vector Search
25 April 2024

Knowledge Graphs for RAG without a GraphDB
18 April 2024

We invite representatives of system vendors to contact us for updating and extending the system information,
and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.