DBMS > Cassandra vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. Oracle vs. SAP HANA vs. Tarantool

System Properties Comparison Cassandra vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. Oracle vs. SAP HANA vs. Tarantool

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Wide-column store based on ideas of BigTable and DynamoDB

Optimized for write access

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

Widely used RDBMS

In-memory, column based data store. Available as appliance or cloud service

In-memory computing platform with a flexible data schema for efficiently building high-performance applications

Primary database model

Wide column store

Relational DBMS

Document store
Key-value store
Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS

with Oracle Spatial and Graph
RDF store

with Oracle Spatial and Graph
Spatial DBMS

with Oracle Spatial and Graph
Vector DBMS

since Oracle 23

Document store
Graph DBMS

with SAP Hana, Enterprise Edition
Spatial DBMS

Spatial DBMS

with Tarantool/GIS extension

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

Score	101.89
Rank	#12	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	824.29
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	1236.29
Rank	#1	Overall
	#1	Relational DBMS

Score	44.69
Rank	#22	Overall
	#16	Relational DBMS

Score	1.72
Rank	#144	Overall
	#25	Document stores
	#25	Key-value stores
	#66	Relational DBMS

Website

cassandra.apache.org

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

www.oracle.com/database

www.sap.com/products/hana.html

www.tarantool.io

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

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

docs.oracle.com/en/database

help.sap.com/hana

www.tarantool.io/en/doc

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Microsoft

Oracle

SAP

Initial release

2008

1989

1980

2010

2008

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

23c, September 2023

2.0 SPS07 (April 4, 2023), April 2023

2.10.0, May 2022

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

commercial

restricted free version is available

commercial

restricted free version is available

commercial

Open Source

BSD-2, source-available extensions (modules), commercial licenses for Tarantool Enterprise

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

also available as a cloud based service

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++

C and C++

Server operating systems

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
Windows

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows
z/OS

Appliance or cloud-service

BSD
Linux
macOS

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

Schemaless in JSON and XML columns

yes

Flexible data schema: relational definition for tables with ability to store json-like documents in columns

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

string, double, decimal, uuid, integer, blob, boolean, datetime

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

with proprietary extensions

yes

Full-featured ANSI SQL support

APIs and other access methods

Proprietary protocol

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

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

JDBC
ODBC
ODP.NET
Oracle Call Interface (OCI)

JDBC
ODBC

Open binary protocol

Supported programming languages

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

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

C
C#
C++
Clojure
Cobol
Delphi
Eiffel
Erlang
Fortran
Groovy
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Lisp
Objective C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Scala
Tcl
Visual Basic

C
C#
C++
Erlang
Go
Java
JavaScript
Lua
Perl
PHP
Python
Rust

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

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

PL/SQL

also stored procedures in Java possible

SQLScript, R

Lua, C and SQL stored procedures

Triggers

yes

yes, before/after data modification events, on replication events, client session events

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, horizontal partitioning

yes

Sharding, partitioned with virtual buckets by user defined affinity key. Live resharding for scale up and scale down without maintenance downtime.

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

yes

Asynchronous replication with multi-master option
Configurable replication topology (full-mesh, chain, star)
Synchronous quorum replication (with Raft)

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

can be realized in PL/SQL

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

can be individually decided for each write operation

Immediate Consistency

Casual consistency across sharding partitions
Eventual consistency within replicaset partition

when using asyncronous replication
Immediate Consistency within single instance
Sequential consistency including linearizable read within replicaset partition

when using Raft

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

ACID

isolation level can be parameterized

ACID

ACID, with serializable isolation and linearizable read (within partition); Configurable MVCC (within partition); No cross-shard distributed transactions

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

yes, cooperative multitasking

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

yes, write ahead logging

In-memory capabilities

Is there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.

yes

Version 12c introduced the new option 'Oracle Database In-Memory'

yes

yes, full featured in-memory storage engine with persistence

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users can be defined per object

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

yes

Access Control Lists
Mutual TLS authentication for Tarantol Enterprise
Password based authentication
Role-based access control (RBAC) and LDAP for Tarantol Enterprise
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.
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Licensing and pricing models

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