DBMS > Cassandra vs. Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. Riak TS vs. Stardog

System Properties Comparison Cassandra vs. Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. Riak TS vs. Stardog

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Wide-column store based on ideas of BigTable and DynamoDB

Optimized for write access

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

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

Riak TS is a distributed NoSQL database optimized for time series data and based on Riak KV

Enterprise Knowledge Graph platform and graph DBMS with high availability, high performance reasoning, and virtualization

Primary database model

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	98.83
Rank	#12	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	76.78
Rank	#16	Overall
	#11	Relational DBMS

Score	821.56
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	0.28
Rank	#307	Overall
	#27	Time Series DBMS

Score	2.07
Rank	#122	Overall
	#11	Graph DBMS
	#6	RDF stores

Website

cassandra.apache.org

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

www.microsoft.com/en-us/sql-server

www.stardog.com

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

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

learn.microsoft.com/en-US/sql/sql-server

www.tiot.jp/riak-docs/riak/ts/latest

docs.stardog.com

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Microsoft

Open Source, formerly Basho Technologies

Stardog-Union

Initial release

2008

2010

1989

2015

2010

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

V12

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

3.0.0, September 2022

7.3.0, May 2020

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

commercial

restricted free version is available

Open Source

commercial

60-day fully-featured trial license; 1-year fully-featured non-commercial use license for academics/students

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.

SQLServer Flex @ STACKIT offers a managed version of SQL Server with adjustable CPU, RAM, storage amount and speed, in enterprise grade to perfectly match all application requirements. All services are 100% GDPR-compliant.

Implementation language

Java

C++

Erlang

Java

Server operating systems

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

hosted

Linux
Windows

Linux
OS X

Linux
macOS
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free

schema-free and OWL/RDFS-schema support

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

Import/export of XML data possible

Secondary indexes

restricted

only equality queries, not always the best performing solution

yes

restricted

yes

supports real-time indexing in full-text and geospatial

SQL

Support of SQL

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

yes

yes, limited

Yes, compatible with all major SQL variants through dedicated BI/SQL Server

APIs and other access methods

Proprietary protocol

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

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
OLE DB
Tabular Data Stream (TDS)

HTTP API
Native Erlang Interface

GraphQL query language
HTTP API
Jena RDF API
OWL
RDF4J API
Sesame REST HTTP Protocol
SNARL
SPARQL
Spring Data
Stardog Studio
TinkerPop 3

Supported programming languages

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

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

C#
C++
Delphi
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Visual Basic

unofficial client library
C#
C++

unofficial client library
Clojure

unofficial client library
Dart

unofficial client library
Erlang
Go

unofficial client library
Groovy

unofficial client library
Haskell

unofficial client library
Java
JavaScript

unofficial client library
Lisp

unofficial client library
Perl

unofficial client library
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

unofficial client library
Smalltalk

unofficial client library

.Net
Clojure
Groovy
Java
JavaScript
Python
Ruby

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

Transact SQL

Transact SQL, .NET languages, R, Python and (with SQL Server 2019) Java

Erlang

user defined functions and aggregates, HTTP Server extensions in Java

Triggers

yes

pre-commit hooks and post-commit hooks

yes

via event handlers

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

tables can be distributed across several files (horizontal partitioning); sharding through federation

Sharding

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

yes, with always 3 replicas available

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

selectable replication factor

Multi-source replication in HA-Cluster

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

Eventual Consistency

Immediate Consistency in HA-Cluster

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

links between datasets can be stored

yes

relationships in graphs

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

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

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Access rights for users and roles

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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