DBMS > Cassandra vs. Heroic vs. Informix vs. Ingres vs. Quasardb

System Properties Comparison Cassandra vs. Heroic vs. Informix vs. Ingres vs. Quasardb

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Wide-column store based on ideas of BigTable and DynamoDB

Optimized for write access

Time Series DBMS built at Spotify based on Cassandra or Google Cloud Bigtable, and ElasticSearch

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

Well established RDBMS

Distributed, high-performance timeseries database

Primary database model

Wide column store

Time Series DBMS

Relational DBMS

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

Relational DBMS

Time Series DBMS

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

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	0.51
Rank	#255	Overall
	#21	Time Series DBMS

Score	17.87
Rank	#35	Overall
	#22	Relational DBMS

Score	4.11
Rank	#81	Overall
	#44	Relational DBMS

Score	0.14
Rank	#332	Overall
	#29	Time Series DBMS

Website

cassandra.apache.org

github.com/spotify/heroic

www.ibm.com/products/informix

www.actian.com/databases/ingres

quasar.ai

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

spotify.github.io/heroic

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

docs.actian.com/ingres

doc.quasar.ai/master

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Spotify

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.

Actian Corporation

quasardb

Initial release

2008

2014

1984

1974

originally developed at University Berkely in early 1970s

2009

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

14.10.FC5, November 2020

11.2, May 2022

3.14.1, January 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

Apache 2.0

commercial

free developer edition available

commercial

Free community edition, Non-profit organizations and non-commercial usage are eligible for free licenses

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, C++ and Java

C++

Server operating systems

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
macOS
Solaris
Windows

AIX
HP Open VMS
HP-UX
Linux
Solaris
Windows

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

Since Version 12.10 support for JSON/BSON datatypes

yes

integer and binary

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.

but tools for importing/exporting data from/to XML-files available

Secondary indexes

restricted

only equality queries, not always the best performing solution

yes

via Elasticsearch

yes

with tags

SQL

Support of SQL

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

yes

SQL-like query language

APIs and other access methods

Proprietary protocol

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

HQL (Heroic Query Language, a JSON-based language)
HTTP API

JDBC
JSON API

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

.NET Client API
JDBC
ODBC
proprietary protocol (OpenAPI)

HTTP API

Supported programming languages

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

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

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

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

Sharding

horizontal partitioning

Ingres Star to access multiple databases simultaneously

Sharding

consistent hashing

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

yes

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

Ingres Replicator

Source-replica replication with selectable replication factor

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

with Hadoop integration

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

can be individually decided for each write operation

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

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

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

MVCC

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

by using LevelDB

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

Transient mode

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users can be defined per object

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

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Cryptographically strong user authentication and audit trail

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

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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