DBMS > Cassandra vs. HBase vs. Lovefield vs. MySQL vs. SQLite

System Properties Comparison Cassandra vs. HBase vs. Lovefield vs. MySQL vs. SQLite

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Wide-column store based on ideas of BigTable and DynamoDB

Optimized for write access

Wide-column store based on Apache Hadoop and on concepts of BigTable

Embeddable relational database for web apps written in pure JavaScript

Widely used open source RDBMS

Widely used embeddable, in-process RDBMS

Primary database model

Wide column store

Relational DBMS

Key/Value like access via memcached API

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

Document store
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	101.89
Rank	#12	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	30.50
Rank	#26	Overall
	#2	Wide column stores

Score	0.29
Rank	#293	Overall
	#133	Relational DBMS

Score	1083.74
Rank	#2	Overall
	#2	Relational DBMS

Score	114.32
Rank	#10	Overall
	#7	Relational DBMS

Website

cassandra.apache.org

hbase.apache.org

google.github.io/lovefield

www.mysql.com

www.sqlite.org

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

hbase.apache.org/book.html

github.com/google/lovefield/blob/master/docs/spec_index.md

dev.mysql.com/doc

www.sqlite.org/docs.html

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top-level project, originally developed by Powerset

Google

Oracle

since 2010, originally MySQL AB, then Sun

Dwayne Richard Hipp

Initial release

2008

2014

1995

2000

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

2.3.4, January 2021

2.1.12, February 2017

8.4.0, April 2024

3.45.3 (15 April 2024), April 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

GPL version 2. Commercial licenses with extended functionallity are available

Open Source

Public Domain

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.

Aiven for MySQL: Fully managed MySQL, deployable in the cloud of your choice, with seamless integrations and lightning-fast setup.

Implementation language

Java

JavaScript

C and C++

Server operating systems

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
Unix
Windows

using Cygwin

server-less, requires a JavaScript environment (browser, Node.js)

tested with Chrome, Firefox, IE, Safari

FreeBSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

server-less

Data scheme

schema-free

schema-free, schema definition possible

yes

dynamic column types

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

options to bring your own types, AVRO

yes

not rigid because of 'dynamic typing' concept.

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)

SQL-like query language

via JavaScript builder pattern

yes

with proprietary extensions

yes

SQL-92 is not fully supported

APIs and other access methods

Proprietary protocol

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

Java API
RESTful HTTP API
Thrift

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary native API

ADO.NET

inofficial driver
JDBC

inofficial driver
ODBC

inofficial driver

Supported programming languages

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

C
C#
C++
Groovy
Java
PHP
Python
Scala

JavaScript

Ada
C
C#
C++
D
Delphi
Eiffel
Erlang
Haskell
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl

Actionscript
Ada
Basic
C
C#
C++
D
Delphi
Forth
Fortran
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Lisp
Lua
MatLab
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
PL/SQL
Python
R
Ruby
Scala
Scheme
Smalltalk
Tcl

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

Coprocessors in Java

yes

proprietary syntax

Triggers

yes

Using read-only observers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

Sharding

none

horizontal partitioning, sharding with MySQL Cluster or MySQL Fabric

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
Source-replica replication

none

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

none

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 or Eventual Consistency

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

not for MyISAM storage engine

yes

Transaction concepts

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

Atomicity and isolation are supported for single operations

Single row ACID (across millions of columns)

ACID

not for MyISAM storage engine

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

table locks or row locks depending on storage engine

yes

via file-system locks

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

yes, by using IndexedDB or the cloud service Firebase Realtime Database

yes

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

using MemoryDB

yes

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users can be defined per object

Access Control Lists (ACL) for RBAC, integration with Apache Ranger for RBAC & ABAC

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

no user groups or 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...
» 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...
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