DBMS > Cassandra vs. GraphDB vs. IBM Db2 vs. Informix vs. Memcached

System Properties Comparison Cassandra vs. GraphDB vs. IBM Db2 vs. Informix vs. Memcached

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Wide-column store based on ideas of BigTable and DynamoDB

Optimized for write access

Enterprise-ready RDF and graph database with efficient reasoning, cluster and external index synchronization support. It supports also SQL JDBC access to Knowledge Graph and GraphQL over SPARQL.

Common in IBM host environments, 2 different versions for host and Windows/Linux

A secure embeddable database from IBM, positioned besides IBM Db2 as a relatively low-cost product optimized for OLTP and Internet of Things data

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

Primary database model

Wide column store

Graph DBMS
RDF store

Relational DBMS

Since Version 10.5 support for JSON/BSON documents compatible with MongoDB

Relational DBMS

Since Version 12.10 support for JSON/BSON datatypes compatible with MongoDB

Key-value store

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

Document store
RDF store

in Db2 LUW (Linux, Unix, Windows)
Spatial DBMS

with Db2 Spatial Extender

Document store
Spatial DBMS
Time Series DBMS

with Informix TimeSeries Extension

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

Score	101.89
Rank	#12	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	3.32
Rank	#91	Overall
	#6	Graph DBMS
	#4	RDF stores

Score	128.46
Rank	#8	Overall
	#5	Relational DBMS

Score	17.87
Rank	#35	Overall
	#22	Relational DBMS

Score	19.42
Rank	#32	Overall
	#4	Key-value stores

Website

cassandra.apache.org

www.ontotext.com

www.ibm.com/products/db2

www.ibm.com/products/informix

www.memcached.org

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

graphdb.ontotext.com/documentation

www.ibm.com/docs/en/db2

informix.hcldoc.com
www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SSGU8G/welcomeIfxServers.html

github.com/memcached/memcached/wiki

Social network pages

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Ontotext

IBM

IBM, HCL Technologies

Effective May 1st, 2017, HCL took on development, technical support, and product management teams, and works jointly with IBM on product strategy, marketing, and sales.

Danga Interactive

originally developed by Brad Fitzpatrick for LiveJournal

Initial release

2008

2000

1983

host version

1984

2003

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

10.4, October 2023

12.1, October 2016

14.10.FC5, November 2020

1.6.25, March 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

commercial

Some plugins of GraphDB Workbench are open sourced

commercial

free version is available

commercial

free developer edition available

Open Source

BSD license

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

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++

C, C++ and Java

Server operating systems

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

All OS with a Java VM
Linux
OS X
Windows

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
Solaris
Windows
z/OS

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
macOS
Solaris
Windows

FreeBSD
Linux
OS X
Unix
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

schema-free and OWL/RDFS-schema support; RDF shapes

yes

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

Since Version 12.10 support for JSON/BSON datatypes

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, supports real-time synchronization and indexing in SOLR/Elastic search/Lucene and GeoSPARQL geometry data indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

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

stored SPARQL accessed as SQL using Apache Calcite through JDBC/ODBC

yes

APIs and other access methods

Proprietary protocol

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

GeoSPARQL
GraphQL
GraphQL Federation
Java API
JDBC
RDF4J API
RDFS
RIO
Sail API
Sesame REST HTTP Protocol
SPARQL 1.1

ADO.NET
JDBC
JSON style queries

MongoDB compatible
ODBC
XQuery

JDBC
JSON API

MongoDB compatible
MQTT (Message Queue Telemetry Transport)
ODBC
RESTful HTTP API

Proprietary protocol

Supported programming languages

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

.Net
C#
Clojure
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

C
C#
C++
Cobol
Delphi
Fortran
Java
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Visual Basic

.Net
C
C++
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby

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

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

well-defined plugin interfaces; JavaScript server-side extensibility

yes

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

none

Sharding

only with Windows/Unix/Linux Version

Sharding

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

yes

with separate tools (MQ, InfoSphere)

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

none

Repcached, a Memcached patch, provides this functionallity

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

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 (configurable in cluster mode per master or individual client request)

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Constraint checking

yes

Transaction concepts

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

Atomicity and isolation are supported for single operations

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

Default Basic authentication through RDF4J client, or via Java when run with cURL, default token-based in the Workbench or via Rest API, optional access through OpenID or Kerberos single sign-on.

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Users with fine-grained authentication, authorization, and auditing controls

yes

using SASL (Simple Authentication and Security Layer) protocol

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

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

Ontotext GraphDB is a semantic database engine that allows organizations to build...
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Competitive advantages

No single point of failure ensures 100% availability . Operational simplicity for...
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GraphDB allows you to link text and data in big knowledge graphs. It’s easy to experiment...
» more

Typical application scenarios

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

Metadata enrichment and management, linked data publishing, semantic inferencing...
» more

Key customers

Apple, Netflix, Uber, ING,, Intuit,Fidelity, NY Times, Outbrain, BazaarVoice, Best...
» more

GraphDB provides a platform for building next-generation AI and Knowledge Graph...
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Market metrics

Cassandra is used by 40% of the Fortune 100.
» more

GraphDB is the most utilized semantic triplestore for mission-critical enterprise...
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Licensing and pricing models

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

GraphDB Free is a non-commercial version and is free to use. GraphDB Enterprise edition...
» more

News

Case study: Policy Enforcement Automation With Semantics
2 May 2024

Okay, RAG… We Have a Problem
26 April 2024

Scaling Understanding with the Help of Feedback Loops, Knowledge Graphs and NLP
19 April 2024

How Knowledge Graphs Power Data Mesh and Data Fabric
10 April 2024

Building Smarter Financial Services: The Role of Semantic Technologies, Knowledge Graphs and Generative AI
3 April 2024

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