DBMS > Cassandra vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. Riak TS vs. Spark SQL vs. Sphinx

System Properties Comparison Cassandra vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. Riak TS vs. Spark SQL vs. Sphinx

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

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

Spark SQL is a component on top of 'Spark Core' for structured data processing

Open source search engine for searching in data from different sources, e.g. relational databases

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	101.89
Rank	#12	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	824.29
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	0.20
Rank	#319	Overall
	#27	Time Series DBMS

Score	18.96
Rank	#33	Overall
	#20	Relational DBMS

Score	5.98
Rank	#56	Overall
	#5	Search engines

Website

cassandra.apache.org

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

spark.apache.org/sql

sphinxsearch.com

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

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

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

spark.apache.org/docs/latest/sql-programming-guide.html

sphinxsearch.com/docs

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Microsoft

Open Source, formerly Basho Technologies

Apache Software Foundation

Sphinx Technologies Inc.

Initial release

2008

1989

2015

2014

2001

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

3.0.0, September 2022

3.5.0 ( 2.13), September 2023

3.5.1, February 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

commercial

restricted free version is available

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

GPL version 2, commercial licence available

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

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Implementation language

Java

C++

Erlang

Scala

C++

Server operating systems

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
Windows

Linux
OS X

Linux
OS X
Windows

FreeBSD
Linux
NetBSD
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free

yes

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

Secondary indexes

restricted

only equality queries, not always the best performing solution

yes

restricted

yes

full-text index on all search fields

SQL

Support of SQL

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

yes

yes, limited

SQL-like DML and DDL statements

SQL-like query language (SphinxQL)

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)

HTTP API
Native Erlang Interface

JDBC
ODBC

Proprietary 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

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

Java
Python
R
Scala

C++

unofficial client library
Java
Perl

unofficial client library
PHP
Python
Ruby

unofficial client library

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

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

Erlang

Triggers

yes

pre-commit hooks and post-commit hooks

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

yes, utilizing Spark Core

Sharding

Partitioning is done manually, search queries against distributed index is supported

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

selectable replication factor

none

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

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

links between datasets can be stored

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

The original contents of fields are not stored in the Sphinx index.

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

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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