DBMS > Cassandra vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. SingleStore vs. TiDB

System Properties Comparison Cassandra vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. SingleStore vs. TiDB

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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

MySQL wire-compliant distributed RDBMS that combines an in-memory row-oriented and a disc-based column-oriented storage with patented universal storage to handle transactional and analytical workloads in one single table type

TiDB is an open source distributed SQL database that supports Hybrid Transactional/Analytical Processing (HTAP) workloads. It is MySQL compatible and features horizontal scalability, strong consistency, and high availability.

Primary database model

Wide column store

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

Document store
Spatial DBMS
Time Series DBMS
Vector DBMS

Document store

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	5.60
Rank	#62	Overall
	#35	Relational DBMS

Score	4.66
Rank	#70	Overall
	#38	Relational DBMS

Website

cassandra.apache.org

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

www.singlestore.com

pingcap.com

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

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

docs.singlestore.com

docs.pingcap.com/tidb/stable

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Microsoft

SingleStore Inc.

PingCAP, Inc.

Initial release

2008

1989

2013

2016

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

8.5, January 2024

8.0.0, March 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

commercial

restricted free version is available

commercial

free developer edition available

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud 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.

SingleStoreDB Cloud: The world's fastest, modern cloud database for both operational (OLTP) and analytical (OLAP) workloads. Available instantly with multi-cloud and hybrid-cloud capabilities

TiDB Cloud: Fully-managed TiDB Service. Bring everything great about TiDB to the cloud.

Implementation language

Java

C++

C++, Go

Go, Rust

Server operating systems

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
Windows

Linux

64 bit version required

Linux

Data scheme

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

SQL

Support of SQL

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

yes

but no triggers and foreign keys

yes

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)

Cluster Management API

as HTTP Rest and CLI
HTTP API
JDBC
MongoDB API
ODBC

GORM
JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary protocol
SQLAlchemy

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

Bash
C
C#
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

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

yes

Triggers

yes

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

hash partitioning

horizontal partitioning (by key range)

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

Source-replica replication

stores two copies of each physical data partition on two separate nodes

Using Raft consensus algorithm to ensure data replication with strong consistency among multiple replicas.

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

can define user-defined aggregate functions for map-reduce-style calculations

yes

with TiSpark Connector

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

can be individually decided for each write operation

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

full support since version 6.6

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

yes, multi-version concurrency control (MVCC)

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

All updates are persistent, including those to disk-based columnstores and memory-based row stores. Transaction commits are supported via write-ahead log.

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

Fine grained access control via users, groups and roles

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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SingleStore offers a fully-managed , distributed, highly-scalable SQL database designed...
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TiDB is an advanced open-source, distributed SQL database for modern application...
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Competitive advantages

No single point of failure ensures 100% availability . Operational simplicity for...
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SingleStore’s competitive advantages include: Easy and Simplified Architecture with...
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- HORIZONTAL SCALING : TiDB grants total transparency into your data workloads without...
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Typical application scenarios

Internet of Things (IOT), fraud detection applications, recommendation engines, product...
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Driving Fast Analytics: SingleStore delivers the fastest and most scalable reporting...
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TiDB is ideal for transactional applications that require extreme scalability and...
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Key customers

Apple, Netflix, Uber, ING,, Intuit,Fidelity, NY Times, Outbrain, BazaarVoice, Best...
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IEX Cloud : Improves Financial Data Distribution Speed 15x with Singlestore DB Comcast,...
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Block, Pinterest, Catalyst, Bolt, Flipkart, Capcom, Shopee (E-commerce), JD Cloud...
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Market metrics

Cassandra is used by 40% of the Fortune 100.
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Customers in various industries worldwide including US and International Industry...
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34K+ GitHub stars 5K+ members in TiDB Community Slack 1K+ community contributors...
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Licensing and pricing models

Apache licenseÂ Pricing for commercial distributions provided by DataStax and available...
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F ree Tier and Enterprise Edition
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TiDB Community : Free open source software (Apache 2.0) TiDB Self-Hosted : Enterprise...
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