DBMS > Cassandra vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Snowflake vs. TerarkDB

System Properties Comparison Cassandra vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Snowflake vs. TerarkDB

Please select another system to include it in the comparison.

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Wide-column store based on ideas of BigTable and DynamoDB

Optimized for write access

Globally distributed, horizontally scalable, multi-model database service

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

A key-value store forked from RocksDB with advanced compression algorithms. It can be used standalone or as a storage engine for MySQL and MongoDB

Primary database model

Wide column store

Document store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store
Wide column store

Relational DBMS

Key-value store

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

Spatial DBMS

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

Score	103.86
Rank	#12	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	29.85
Rank	#27	Overall
	#4	Document stores
	#2	Graph DBMS
	#3	Key-value stores
	#3	Wide column stores

Score	123.20
Rank	#9	Overall
	#6	Relational DBMS

Score	0.04
Rank	#377	Overall
	#58	Key-value stores

Website

cassandra.apache.org

azure.microsoft.com/services/cosmos-db

www.snowflake.com

github.com/bytedance/terarkdb

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

learn.microsoft.com/azure/cosmos-db

docs.snowflake.net/manuals/index.html

bytedance.larkoffice.com/docs/doccnZmYFqHBm06BbvYgjsHHcKc

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Microsoft

Snowflake Computing Inc.

ByteDance, originally Terark

Initial release

2008

2014

2016

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

commercial

restricted open source version available

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++

Server operating systems

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

hosted

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

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

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

JSON types

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

All properties auto-indexed by default

SQL

Support of SQL

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

SQL-like query language

yes

APIs and other access methods

Proprietary protocol

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

DocumentDB API
Graph API (Gremlin)
MongoDB API
RESTful HTTP API
Table API

CLI Client
JDBC
ODBC

C++ API
Java API

Supported programming languages

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

.Net
C#
Java
JavaScript
JavaScript (Node.js)
MongoDB client drivers written for various programming languages
Python

JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

C++
Java

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

JavaScript

user defined functions

Triggers

yes

JavaScript

similar concept for controling cloud resources

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

yes

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

yes

none

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

with Hadoop integration

Integration with Hadoop/HDInsight on Azure*

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

can be individually decided for each write operation

Bounded Staleness
Consistent Prefix
Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Consistency level configurable on request level
Session 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

Multi-item ACID transactions with snapshot isolation within a partition

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

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

Access rights can be defined down to the item level

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...
» more

Competitive advantages

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

Typical application scenarios

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

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...
» more

News

Knowledge Graphs for RAG without a GraphDB
18 April 2024

How Winweb Built its AI Assistant with DataStax Astra DB and LangChain
17 April 2024

Vercel + Astra DB: Get Data into Your GenAI Apps Fast
16 April 2024

Simplifying Agent Development with Astra DB Connector for Vertex AI Search
11 April 2024

Making Astra DB easier for MongoDB developers
10 April 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.