DBMS > Cassandra vs. HBase vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. MongoDB vs. RavenDB

System Properties Comparison Cassandra vs. HBase vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. MongoDB vs. RavenDB

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

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

One of the most popular document stores available both as a fully managed cloud service and for deployment on self-managed infrastructure

Open Source Operational and Transactional Enterprise NoSQL Document Database

Primary database model

Wide column store

Relational DBMS

Document store

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

Spatial DBMS
Search engine

integrated Lucene index, currently in MongoDB Atlas only.
Time Series DBMS

Time Series Collections introduced in Release 5.0
Vector DBMS

currently available in the MongoDB Atlas cloud service only

Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS
Time Series 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	824.29
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	421.65
Rank	#5	Overall
	#1	Document stores

Score	2.92
Rank	#101	Overall
	#18	Document stores

Website

cassandra.apache.org

hbase.apache.org

www.microsoft.com/en-us/sql-server

www.mongodb.com

ravendb.net

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

hbase.apache.org/book.html

learn.microsoft.com/en-US/sql/sql-server

www.mongodb.com/docs/manual

ravendb.net/docs

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top-level project, originally developed by Powerset

Microsoft

MongoDB, Inc

Hibernating Rhinos

Initial release

2008

1989

2009

2010

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

2.3.4, January 2021

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

6.0.7, June 2023

5.4, July 2022

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

Apache version 2

commercial

restricted free version is available

Open Source

MongoDB Inc.'s Server Side Public License v1. Prior versions were published under GNU AGPL v3.0. Commercial licenses are also available.

Open Source

AGPL version 3, commercial license available

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

MongoDB available as DBaaS (MongoDB Atlas)

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.

MongoDB Atlas: Global multi-cloud database with unmatched data distribution and mobility across AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, built-in automation for resource and workload optimization, and so much more.

Implementation language

Java

C++

Server operating systems

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
Unix
Windows

using Cygwin

Linux
Windows

Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Linux
macOS
Raspberry Pi
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

schema-free, schema definition possible

yes

schema-free

Although schema-free, documents of the same collection often follow the same structure. Optionally impose all or part of a schema by defining a JSON schema.

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

options to bring your own types, AVRO

yes

string, integer, double, decimal, boolean, date, object_id, geospatial

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

Read-only SQL queries via the MongoDB Atlas SQL Interface

SQL-like query language (RQL)

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
OLE DB
Tabular Data Stream (TDS)

GraphQL
HTTP REST
Prisma
proprietary protocol using JSON

.NET Client API
F# Client API
Go Client API
Java Client API
NodeJS Client API
PHP Client API
Python Client API
RESTful HTTP API

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

C#
C++
Delphi
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Visual Basic

Actionscript

unofficial driver
C
C#
C++
Clojure

unofficial driver
ColdFusion

unofficial driver
D

unofficial driver
Dart

unofficial driver
Delphi

unofficial driver
Erlang
Go
Groovy

unofficial driver
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Kotlin
Lisp

unofficial driver
Lua

unofficial driver
MatLab

unofficial driver
Perl
PHP
PowerShell

unofficial driver
Prolog

unofficial driver
Python
R

unofficial driver
Ruby
Rust
Scala
Smalltalk

unofficial driver
Swift

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

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

Coprocessors in Java

Transact SQL, .NET languages, R, Python and (with SQL Server 2019) Java

JavaScript

yes

Triggers

yes

in MongoDB Atlas only

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

Sharding

tables can be distributed across several files (horizontal partitioning); sharding through federation

Sharding

Partitioned by hashed, ranged, or zoned sharding keys. Live resharding allows users to change their shard keys as an online operation with zero downtime.

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
Source-replica replication

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

Multi-Source deployments with MongoDB Atlas Global Clusters
Source-replica replication

Multi-source replication

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

Eventual Consistency

can be individually decided for each read operation
Immediate Consistency

default behaviour

Default ACID transactions on the local node (eventually consistent across the cluster). Atomic operations with cluster-wide ACID transactions. Eventual consistency for indexes and full-text search indexes.

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

typically not used, however similar functionality with DBRef possible

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

Multi-document ACID Transactions with snapshot isolation

ACID, Cluster-wide transaction available

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

optional, enabled by default

yes

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

In-memory storage engine introduced with MongoDB version 3.2

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

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Access rights for users and roles

Authorization levels configured per client per database

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Apache Cassandra is the leading NoSQL, distributed database management system, well...
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MongoDB provides an integrated suite of cloud database and data services to accelerate...
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Competitive advantages

No single point of failure ensures 100% availability . Operational simplicity for...
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Built around the flexible document data model and unified API, MongoDB is a developer...
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Typical application scenarios

Internet of Things (IOT), fraud detection applications, recommendation engines, product...
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AI-enriched intelligent apps (Continental, Telefonica, Iron Mountain) Internet of...
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Key customers

Apple, Netflix, Uber, ING,, Intuit,Fidelity, NY Times, Outbrain, BazaarVoice, Best...
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ADP, Adobe, Amadeus, AstraZeneca, Auto Trader, Barclays, BBVA, Bosch, Cisco, CERN,...
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Market metrics

Cassandra is used by 40% of the Fortune 100.
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Hundreds of millions downloads, over 150,000+ Atlas clusters provisioned every month...
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Licensing and pricing models

Apache licenseÂ Pricing for commercial distributions provided by DataStax and available...
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MongoDB database server: Server-Side Public License (SSPL) . Commercial licenses...
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