DBMS > Apache Cassandra vs. Google Cloud Spanner vs. ObjectBox vs. Snowflake vs. Splunk

System Properties Comparison Apache Cassandra vs. Google Cloud Spanner vs. ObjectBox vs. Snowflake vs. Splunk

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.

Lightweight, fast on-device database for IoT, Mobile and Embedded devices, persisting and synchronising objects and vectors

Cloud-based data warehousing service for structured and semi-structured data

Analytics Platform for Big Data

Primary database model

Wide column store

Relational DBMS

Object oriented DBMS
Vector DBMS

Relational DBMS

Search engine

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

Time Series DBMS

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	1.08
Rank	#179	Overall
	#6	Object oriented DBMS
	#9	Vector DBMS

Score	133.72
Rank	#7	Overall
	#5	Relational DBMS

Score	93.02
Rank	#13	Overall
	#2	Search engines

Website

cassandra.apache.org

cloud.google.com/spanner

github.com/objectbox
objectbox.io

www.snowflake.com

www.splunk.com

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

cloud.google.com/spanner/docs

docs.objectbox.io

docs.snowflake.net/manuals/index.html

docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Google

ObjectBox Limited

Snowflake Computing Inc.

Splunk Inc.

Initial release

2008

2017

2014

2003

Current release

5.0-rc1, July 2024

4.0 (May 2024)

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

commercial

Bindings are released under Apache 2.0

Apache License 2.0

commercial

Limited free edition and free developer edition available

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 and C++

Server operating systems

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

hosted

Android
Any POSIX system
Docker
iOS
Linux
macOS
QNX
Windows

hosted

Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

support of semi-structured data formats (JSON, XML, Avro)

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

yes, plus "flex" map-like types

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

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

yes

Splunk Search Processing Language for search commands

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

Proprietary native API

CLI Client
JDBC
ODBC

HTTP REST

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
C++
Dart (Flutter)
Go
Java
Kotlin
Python
Swift

JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

C#
Java
JavaScript
PHP
Python
Ruby

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

user defined functions

yes

Triggers

yes

similar concept for controling cloud resources

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

Sharding

none

yes

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.

Data sync between devices allowing occasional connected databases to work completely offline

yes

Multi-source replication

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

Eventual Consistency

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

A 'Transaction' in Splunk has a different meaning: grouping related events into a single one for later searching

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.

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

Users with fine-grained authorization concept, user roles and pluggable authentication

Access rights for users and roles

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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and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.