DBMS > Cassandra vs. GridGain vs. NuoDB vs. Oracle Berkeley DB vs. Sphinx

System Properties Comparison Cassandra vs. GridGain vs. NuoDB vs. Oracle Berkeley DB vs. Sphinx

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Wide-column store based on ideas of BigTable and DynamoDB

Optimized for write access

GridGain is an in-memory computing platform, built on Apache Ignite

NuoDB is a webscale distributed database that supports SQL and ACID transactions

Widely used in-process key-value store

Open source search engine for searching in data from different sources, e.g. relational databases

Primary database model

Wide column store

Key-value store
Relational DBMS

Relational DBMS

Key-value store

supports sorted and unsorted key sets
Native XML DBMS

in the Oracle Berkeley DB XML version

Search engine

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

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

Score	98.83
Rank	#12	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	1.55
Rank	#150	Overall
	#26	Key-value stores
	#70	Relational DBMS

Score	0.94
Rank	#197	Overall
	#92	Relational DBMS

Score	2.01
Rank	#126	Overall
	#21	Key-value stores
	#3	Native XML DBMS

Score	5.95
Rank	#55	Overall
	#5	Search engines

Website

cassandra.apache.org

www.gridgain.com

www.3ds.com/nuodb-distributed-sql-database

www.oracle.com/database/technologies/related/berkeleydb.html

sphinxsearch.com

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

www.gridgain.com/docs/index.html

doc.nuodb.com

docs.oracle.com/cd/E17076_05/html/index.html

sphinxsearch.com/docs

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

GridGain Systems, Inc.

Dassault Systèmes

originally NuoDB, Inc.

Oracle

originally developed by Sleepycat, which was acquired by Oracle

Sphinx Technologies Inc.

Initial release

2008

2007

2013

1994

2001

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

GridGain 8.5.1

18.1.40, May 2020

3.5.1, February 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

commercial

limited edition free

Open Source

commercial license available

Open Source

GPL version 2, commercial licence available

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

Java, C++, .Net

C++

C, Java, C++ (depending on the Berkeley DB edition)

C++

Server operating systems

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

hosted

Amazon EC2, Windows Azure, SoftLayer
Linux
OS X
Windows

AIX
Android
FreeBSD
iOS
Linux
OS X
Solaris
VxWorks
Windows

FreeBSD
Linux
NetBSD
OS X
Solaris
Windows

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

only with the Berkeley DB XML edition

Secondary indexes

restricted

only equality queries, not always the best performing solution

yes

full-text index on all search fields

SQL

Support of SQL

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

ANSI-99 for query and DML statements, subset of DDL

yes

SQL interfaced based on SQLite is available

SQL-like query language (SphinxQL)

APIs and other access methods

Proprietary protocol

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

HDFS API
Hibernate
JCache
JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary protocol
RESTful HTTP API
Spring Data

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC

Proprietary protocol

Supported programming languages

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

C#
C++
Java
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

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

.Net

Figaro is a .Net framework assembly that extends Berkeley DB XML into an embeddable database engine for .NET
others

Third-party libraries to manipulate Berkeley DB files are available for many languages
C
C#
C++
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)

3rd party binding
Perl
Python
Tcl

C++

unofficial client library
Java
Perl

unofficial client library
PHP
Python
Ruby

unofficial client library

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes (compute grid and cache interceptors can be used instead)

Java, SQL

Triggers

yes

yes (cache interceptors and events)

yes

only for the SQL API

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

Sharding

data is dynamically stored/cached on the nodes where it is read/written

none

Sharding

Partitioning is done manually, search queries against distributed index is supported

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

yes (replicated cache)

yes

Managed transparently by NuoDB

Source-replica replication

none

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

yes (compute grid and hadoop accelerator)

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

can be individually decided for each write operation

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

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

tunable commit protocol

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

MVCC

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

The original contents of fields are not stored in the Sphinx index.

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

Temporary table

yes

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users can be defined per object

Security Hooks for custom implementations

Standard SQL roles/ privileges, Administrative Users

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...
» more

Typical application scenarios

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

Licensing and pricing models

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

News

An Introduction to Phil Nash, Developer Relations
3 June 2024

Focus on Creativity, Not Clusters: DataStax Mission Control in Action!
30 May 2024

How Concide Built its Chat Platform with Enhanced Document Management for Legal Tech Professionals
23 May 2024

Astra Vectorize: Generate Vector Embeddings with 1 Line of Code
22 May 2024

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