DBMS > Cassandra vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Solr vs. TimesTen vs. XTDB

System Properties Comparison Cassandra vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Solr vs. TimesTen vs. XTDB

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

A widely used distributed, scalable search engine based on Apache Lucene

In-Memory RDBMS compatible to Oracle

A general purpose database with bitemporal SQL and Datalog and graph queries

Primary database model

Wide column store

Document store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store
Wide column store

Search engine

Relational DBMS

Document 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	101.89
Rank	#12	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	29.04
Rank	#27	Overall
	#4	Document stores
	#2	Graph DBMS
	#3	Key-value stores
	#3	Wide column stores

Score	42.91
Rank	#24	Overall
	#3	Search engines

Score	1.31
Rank	#163	Overall
	#74	Relational DBMS

Score	0.11
Rank	#343	Overall
	#46	Document stores

Website

cassandra.apache.org

azure.microsoft.com/services/cosmos-db

solr.apache.org

www.oracle.com/database/technologies/related/timesten.html

github.com/xtdb/xtdb
www.xtdb.com

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

learn.microsoft.com/azure/cosmos-db

solr.apache.org/resources.html

docs.oracle.com/database/timesten-18.1

www.xtdb.com/docs

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Microsoft

Apache Software Foundation

Oracle, TimesTen Performance Software, HP

originally founded in HP Labs it was acquired by Oracle in 2005

Juxt Ltd.

Initial release

2008

2014

2006

1998

2019

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

9.6.0, April 2024

11 Release 2 (11.2.2.8.0)

1.19, September 2021

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

commercial

Open Source

Apache Version 2

commercial

Open Source

MIT License

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

Clojure

Server operating systems

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

hosted

All OS with a Java VM

runs as a servlet in servlet container (e.g. Tomcat, Jetty is included)

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
Solaris SPARC/x86
Windows

All OS with a Java 8 (and higher) VM
Linux

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

Dynamic Fields enables on-the-fly addition of new fields

yes

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

JSON types

yes

supports customizable data types and automatic typing

yes

yes, extensible-data-notation format

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

yes

All search fields are automatically indexed

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

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

SQL-like query language

Solr Parallel SQL Interface

yes

limited SQL, making use of Apache Calcite

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

Java API
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

JDBC
ODBC
ODP.NET
Oracle Call Interface (OCI)

HTTP REST
JDBC

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

.Net
Erlang
Java
JavaScript
any language that supports sockets and either XML or JSON
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

C
C++
Java
PL/SQL

Clojure
Java

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

JavaScript

Java plugins

PL/SQL

Triggers

yes

JavaScript

yes

User configurable commands triggered on index changes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

Sharding

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

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

yes, each node contains all data

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

with Hadoop integration

Integration with Hadoop/HDInsight on Azure*

spark-solr: github.com/lucidworks/spark-solr and streaming expressions to reduce

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

Eventual Consistency

Immediate Consistency or Eventual Consistency depending on configuration

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

optimistic locking

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

by means of logfiles and checkpoints

yes, flexibel persistency by using storage technologies like Apache Kafka, RocksDB or LMDB

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

yes

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...
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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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