DBMS > Cassandra vs. IBM Db2 vs. Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs. QuestDB vs. RDF4J

System Properties Comparison Cassandra vs. IBM Db2 vs. Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs. QuestDB vs. RDF4J

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Wide-column store based on ideas of BigTable and DynamoDB

Optimized for write access

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

Database as a Service offering with high compatibility to Microsoft SQL Server

A high performance open source SQL database for time series data

RDF4J is a Java framework for processing RDF data, supporting both memory-based and a disk-based storage.

Primary database model

Wide column store

Relational DBMS

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

Relational DBMS

Time Series DBMS

RDF 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
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

Relational DBMS

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

Score	101.89
Rank	#12	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	128.46
Rank	#8	Overall
	#5	Relational DBMS

Score	77.99
Rank	#16	Overall
	#11	Relational DBMS

Score	2.52
Rank	#109	Overall
	#9	Time Series DBMS

Score	0.69
Rank	#230	Overall
	#9	RDF stores

Website

cassandra.apache.org

www.ibm.com/products/db2

azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/azure-sql/database

questdb.io

rdf4j.org

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

www.ibm.com/docs/en/db2

docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-sql

questdb.io/docs

rdf4j.org/documentation

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

IBM

Microsoft

QuestDB Technology Inc

Since 2016 officially forked into an Eclipse project, former developer was Aduna Software.

Initial release

2008

1983

host version

2010

2014

2004

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

12.1, October 2016

V12

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

commercial

free version is available

commercial

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

Eclipse Distribution License (EDL), v1.0.

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

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++

Java (Zero-GC), C++, Rust

Java

Server operating systems

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
Solaris
Windows
z/OS

hosted

Linux
macOS
Windows

Linux
OS X
Unix
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free via InfluxDB Line Protocol

yes

RDF Schemas

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

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

SQL with time-series extensions

APIs and other access methods

Proprietary protocol

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

ADO.NET
JDBC
JSON style queries

MongoDB compatible
ODBC
XQuery

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC

HTTP REST
InfluxDB Line Protocol (TCP/UDP)
JDBC
PostgreSQL wire protocol

Java API
RIO

RDF Input/Output
Sail API
SeRQL

Sesame RDF Query Language
Sesame REST HTTP Protocol
SPARQL

Supported programming languages

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

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

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

PostgreSQL driver
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python
Rust

over HTTP

Java
PHP
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

Transact SQL

yes

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

Sharding

only with Windows/Unix/Linux Version

horizontal partitioning (by timestamps)

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

yes

with separate tools (MQ, InfoSphere)

yes, with always 3 replicas available

Source-replica replication with eventual consistency

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

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

ACID for single-table writes

ACID

Isolation support depends on the API used

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

in-memory storage is supported as well

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

through memory mapped files

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users can be defined per object

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

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

Relational model with native time series support Column-based storage and time partitioned...
» more

Competitive advantages

No single point of failure ensures 100% availability . Operational simplicity for...
» more

High ingestion throughput: peak of 4M rows/sec (TSBS Benchmark) Code optimizations...
» more

Typical application scenarios

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

Financial tick data Industrial IoT Application Metrics Monitoring
» more

Key customers

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

Banks & Hedge funds, Yahoo, OKX, Airbus, Aquis Exchange, Net App, Cloudera, Airtel,...
» 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

Open source Apache 2.0 QuestDB Enterprise QuestDB Cloud
» more

News

Does "vpmovzxbd" Scare You? Here's Why it Doesn't Have To
12 April 2024

Create an ADS-B flight radar with QuestDB and a Raspberry Pi
8 April 2024

Build a temperature IoT sensor with Raspberry Pi Pico & QuestDB
5 April 2024

Create an IoT server with QuestDB and a Raspberry Pi
4 April 2024

TimescaleDB vs. QuestDB: Performance benchmarks and overview
27 March 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.