DBMS > Cassandra vs. Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs. QuestDB vs. TimescaleDB vs. Vitess

System Properties Comparison Cassandra vs. Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs. QuestDB vs. TimescaleDB vs. Vitess

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

A high performance open source SQL database for time series data

A time series DBMS optimized for fast ingest and complex queries, based on PostgreSQL

Scalable, distributed, cloud-native DBMS, extending MySQL

Primary database model

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

Relational DBMS

Document store
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	2.70
Rank	#105	Overall
	#8	Time Series DBMS

Score	4.46
Rank	#71	Overall
	#5	Time Series DBMS

Score	0.88
Rank	#203	Overall
	#95	Relational DBMS

Website

cassandra.apache.org

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

questdb.io

www.timescale.com

vitess.io

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

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

questdb.io/docs

docs.timescale.com

vitess.io/docs

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Microsoft

QuestDB Technology Inc

Timescale

The Linux Foundation, PlanetScale

Initial release

2008

2010

2014

2017

2013

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

V12

2.15.0, May 2024

15.0.2, December 2022

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

commercial

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

Apache Version 2.0, commercial licenses 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++

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

Server operating systems

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

hosted

Linux
macOS
Windows

Linux
OS X
Windows

Docker
Linux
macOS

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free via InfluxDB Line Protocol

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

numerics, strings, booleans, arrays, JSON blobs, geospatial dimensions, currencies, binary data, other complex data 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

SQL

Support of SQL

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

yes

SQL with time-series extensions

yes

full PostgreSQL SQL syntax

yes

with proprietary extensions

APIs and other access methods

Proprietary protocol

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

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC

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

ADO.NET
JDBC
native C library
ODBC
streaming API for large objects

ADO.NET
JDBC
MySQL protocol
ODBC

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

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

over HTTP

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java

JDBC
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl

Ada
C
C#
C++
D
Delphi
Eiffel
Erlang
Haskell
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

Transact SQL

user defined functions, PL/pgSQL, PL/Tcl, PL/Perl, PL/Python, PL/Java, PL/PHP, PL/R, PL/Ruby, PL/Scheme, PL/Unix shell

yes

proprietary syntax

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

horizontal partitioning (by timestamps)

yes, across time and space (hash partitioning) attributes

Sharding

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

Source-replica replication with eventual consistency

Source-replica replication with hot standby and reads on replicas

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

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 across shards
Immediate Consistency within a shard

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

not for MyISAM storage engine

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

ACID at shard level

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

table locks or row locks depending on storage engine

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

through memory mapped files

yes

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users can be defined per object

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

no user groups or 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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Relational model with native time series support Column-based storage and time partitioned...
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Competitive advantages

No single point of failure ensures 100% availability . Operational simplicity for...
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High ingestion throughput: peak of 4M rows/sec (TSBS Benchmark) Code optimizations...
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Typical application scenarios

Internet of Things (IOT), fraud detection applications, recommendation engines, product...
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Financial tick data Industrial IoT Application Metrics Monitoring
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Key customers

Apple, Netflix, Uber, ING,, Intuit,Fidelity, NY Times, Outbrain, BazaarVoice, Best...
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Banks & Hedge funds, Yahoo, OKX, Airbus, Aquis Exchange, Net App, Cloudera, Airtel,...
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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...
» more

Open source Apache 2.0 QuestDB Enterprise QuestDB Cloud
» more

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