DBMS > Cassandra vs. Informix vs. SingleStore vs. Snowflake

System Properties Comparison Cassandra vs. Informix vs. SingleStore vs. Snowflake

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Wide-column store based on ideas of BigTable and DynamoDB

Optimized for write access

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

MySQL wire-compliant distributed RDBMS that combines an in-memory row-oriented and a disc-based column-oriented storage with patented universal storage to handle transactional and analytical workloads in one single table type

Cloud-based data warehousing service for structured and semi-structured data

Primary database model

Wide column store

Relational DBMS

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

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

Document store
Spatial DBMS
Time Series DBMS

with Informix TimeSeries Extension

Document store
Spatial DBMS
Time Series DBMS
Vector DBMS

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

Score	101.89
Rank	#12	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	17.87
Rank	#35	Overall
	#22	Relational DBMS

Score	5.60
Rank	#62	Overall
	#35	Relational DBMS

Score	121.33
Rank	#9	Overall
	#6	Relational DBMS

Website

cassandra.apache.org

www.ibm.com/products/informix

www.singlestore.com

www.snowflake.com

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

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

docs.singlestore.com

docs.snowflake.net/manuals/index.html

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

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.

SingleStore Inc.

Snowflake Computing Inc.

Initial release

2008

1984

2013

2014

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

14.10.FC5, November 2020

8.5, January 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

commercial

free developer edition available

commercial

free developer edition available

commercial

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.

SingleStoreDB Cloud: The world's fastest, modern cloud database for both operational (OLTP) and analytical (OLAP) workloads. Available instantly with multi-cloud and hybrid-cloud capabilities

Implementation language

Java

C, C++ and Java

C++, Go

Server operating systems

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
macOS
Solaris
Windows

Linux

64 bit version required

hosted

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

support of semi-structured data formats (JSON, XML, Avro)

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

Since Version 12.10 support for JSON/BSON datatypes

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

but no triggers and foreign keys

yes

APIs and other access methods

Proprietary protocol

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

JDBC
JSON API

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

Cluster Management API

as HTTP Rest and CLI
HTTP API
JDBC
MongoDB API
ODBC

CLI Client
JDBC
ODBC

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

Bash
C
C#
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

user defined functions

Triggers

yes

similar concept for controling cloud resources

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

Sharding

hash partitioning

yes

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

Source-replica replication

stores two copies of each physical data partition on two separate nodes

yes

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

can define user-defined aggregate functions for map-reduce-style calculations

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

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

yes, multi-version concurrency control (MVCC)

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

All updates are persistent, including those to disk-based columnstores and memory-based row stores. Transaction commits are supported via write-ahead log.

yes

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

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 control via users, groups and roles

Users with fine-grained authorization concept, user roles and pluggable authentication

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Apache Cassandra is the leading NoSQL, distributed database management system, well...
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SingleStore offers a fully-managed , distributed, highly-scalable SQL database designed...
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Competitive advantages

No single point of failure ensures 100% availability . Operational simplicity for...
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SingleStore’s competitive advantages include: Easy and Simplified Architecture with...
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Typical application scenarios

Internet of Things (IOT), fraud detection applications, recommendation engines, product...
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Driving Fast Analytics: SingleStore delivers the fastest and most scalable reporting...
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Key customers

Apple, Netflix, Uber, ING,, Intuit,Fidelity, NY Times, Outbrain, BazaarVoice, Best...
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IEX Cloud : Improves Financial Data Distribution Speed 15x with Singlestore DB Comcast,...
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Market metrics

Cassandra is used by 40% of the Fortune 100.
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Customers in various industries worldwide including US and International Industry...
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Licensing and pricing models

Apache licenseÂ Pricing for commercial distributions provided by DataStax and available...
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F ree Tier and Enterprise Edition
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