DBMS > Cassandra vs. Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs. Stardog vs. Virtuoso vs. YugabyteDB

System Properties Comparison Cassandra vs. Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs. Stardog vs. Virtuoso vs. YugabyteDB

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

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

Virtuoso is a multi-model hybrid-RDBMS that supports management of data represented as relational tables and/or property graphs

High-performance distributed SQL database for global, internet-scale applications. Wire and feature compatible with PostgreSQL.

Primary database model

Wide column store

Relational DBMS

Graph DBMS
RDF store

Document store
Graph DBMS
Native XML DBMS
Relational DBMS
RDF store
Search engine

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

Spatial DBMS

Document store
Wide column store

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

Score	101.89
Rank	#12	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	77.99
Rank	#16	Overall
	#11	Relational DBMS

Score	2.02
Rank	#123	Overall
	#11	Graph DBMS
	#6	RDF stores

Score	4.26
Rank	#78	Overall
	#13	Document stores
	#4	Graph DBMS
	#2	Native XML DBMS
	#42	Relational DBMS
	#2	RDF stores
	#9	Search engines

Score	2.91
Rank	#102	Overall
	#51	Relational DBMS

Website

cassandra.apache.org

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

www.stardog.com

virtuoso.openlinksw.com

www.yugabyte.com

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

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

docs.stardog.com

docs.openlinksw.com/virtuoso

docs.yugabyte.com
github.com/yugabyte/yugabyte-db

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Microsoft

Stardog-Union

OpenLink Software

Yugabyte Inc.

Initial release

2008

2010

1998

2017

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

V12

7.3.0, May 2020

7.2.11, September 2023

2.19, September 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

commercial

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

Open Source

GPLv2, extended commercial license available

Open Source

Apache 2.0

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.

YugabyteDB Managed is the fully managed database-as-a-service offering of YugabyteDB. Get started quickly, and effortlessly ensure continuous availability and limitless scale of your cloud native applications.

Implementation language

Java

C++

Java

C and C++

Server operating systems

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

hosted

Linux
macOS
Windows

AIX
FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Linux
OS X

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free and OWL/RDFS-schema support

yes

SQL - Standard relational schema
RDF - Quad (S, P, O, G) or Triple (S, P, O)
XML - DTD, XML Schema
DAV - freeform filesystem objects, plus User Defined Types a/k/a Dynamic Extension Type

depending on used data model

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

yes

Secondary indexes

restricted

only equality queries, not always the best performing solution

yes

supports real-time indexing in full-text and geospatial

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

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

yes

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

yes

SQL-92, SQL-200x, SQL-3, SQLX

yes, PostgreSQL compatible

APIs and other access methods

Proprietary protocol

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

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC

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

ADO.NET
GeoSPARQL
HTTP API
JDBC
Jena RDF API
ODBC
OLE DB
RDF4J API
RESTful HTTP API
Sesame REST HTTP Protocol
SOAP webservices
SPARQL 1.1
WebDAV
XPath
XQuery
XSLT

JDBC
YCQL, an SQL-based flexible-schema API with its roots in Cassandra Query Language
YSQL - a fully relational SQL API that is wire compatible with the SQL language in PostgreSQL

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

.Net
Clojure
Groovy
Java
JavaScript
Python
Ruby

.Net
C
C#
C++
Java
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Visual Basic

C
C#
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby
Rust
Scala

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

Transact SQL

user defined functions and aggregates, HTTP Server extensions in Java

yes

Virtuoso PL

yes

sql, plpgsql, C

Triggers

yes

via event handlers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

none

yes

Hash and Range Sharding, row-level geo-partitioning

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

Multi-source replication in HA-Cluster

Chain, star, and bi-directional replication
Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

Based on Raft distributed consensus protocol, minimum 3 replicas for continuous availability

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

Immediate Consistency in HA-Cluster

Immediate Consistency

Strong consistency on writes and tunable consistency on reads

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

relationships in graphs

yes

Transaction concepts

Support to ensure data integrity after non-atomic manipulations of data

Atomicity and isolation are supported for single operations

ACID

Distributed ACID with Serializable & Snapshot Isolation. Inspired by Google Spanner architecture.

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

based on RocksDB

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

Fine-grained Attribute-Based Access Control (ABAC) in addition to typical coarse-grained Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) according to SQL-standard. Pluggable authentication with supported standards (LDAP, Active Directory, Kerberos)

yes

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Apache Cassandra is the leading NoSQL, distributed database management system, well...
» more

Virtuoso is a modern multi-model RDBMS for managing data represented as tabular relations...
» more

YugabyteDB is an open source distributed SQL database for cloud native transactional...
» more

Competitive advantages

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

Performance & Scale — as exemplified by DBpedia and the LOD Cloud it spawned, i.e.,...
» more

PostgreSQL compatible: Get instantly productive with a PostgreSQL compatible RDBMS....
» more

Typical application scenarios

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

Used for — Analytics/BI Conceptual Data Virtualization Enterprise Knowledge Graphs...
» more

Systems of record and engagement for cloud native applications that require resilience,...
» more

Key customers

Apple, Netflix, Uber, ING,, Intuit,Fidelity, NY Times, Outbrain, BazaarVoice, Best...
» more

Broad use across enterprises and governments including — European Union (EU) US Government...
» more

Market metrics

Cassandra is used by 40% of the Fortune 100.
» more

Largest installed-base of Multi-Model RDBMS for AI-friendly Knowledge Graphs Platform...
» more

2 Million+ lifetime clusters deployed, 6.5K+ GitHub stars, 7K YugabyteDB Community...
» more

Licensing and pricing models

Apache licenseÂ Pricing for commercial distributions provided by DataStax and available...
» more

Available in both Commercial Enterprise and Open Source (GPL v2) Editions Feature...
» more

Apache 2.0 license for the database
» more

News

GitHub Copilot + DataStax Astra DB: Build GenAI Apps 100x Faster
21 May 2024

Empowering On-Premises Deployments with Generative AI: Introducing Vector Search for a Self-Managed Modern Architecture
15 May 2024

Tips and Tricks for the DataStax Astra CLI
7 May 2024

How to Build a Crystal Image Search App with Vector Search
25 April 2024

Knowledge Graphs for RAG without a GraphDB
18 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.