DBMS > Apache Cassandra vs. MongoDB vs. RDF4J vs. Sphinx vs. Splunk

System Properties Comparison Apache Cassandra vs. MongoDB vs. RDF4J vs. Sphinx vs. Splunk

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Wide-column store based on ideas of BigTable and DynamoDB

Optimized for write access

One of the most popular document stores available both as a fully managed cloud service and for deployment on self-managed infrastructure

RDF4J is a Java framework for processing RDF data, supporting both memory-based and a disk-based storage.

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

Analytics Platform for Big Data

Primary database model

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

Spatial DBMS
Search engine

integrated Lucene index, currently in MongoDB Atlas only.
Time Series DBMS

Time Series Collections introduced in Release 5.0
Vector DBMS

currently available in the MongoDB Atlas cloud service only

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

Score	98.94
Rank	#11	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	410.24
Rank	#5	Overall
	#1	Document stores

Score	0.72
Rank	#222	Overall
	#9	RDF stores

Score	5.97
Rank	#56	Overall
	#5	Search engines

Score	93.02
Rank	#13	Overall
	#2	Search engines

Website

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

www.mongodb.com/docs/manual

rdf4j.org/documentation

sphinxsearch.com/docs

docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

MongoDB, Inc

Since 2016 officially forked into an Eclipse project, former developer was Aduna Software.

Sphinx Technologies Inc.

Splunk Inc.

Initial release

2008

2009

2004

2001

2003

Current release

5.0-rc1, July 2024

7.0.5, January 2024

3.5.1, February 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

MongoDB Inc.'s Server Side Public License v1. Prior versions were published under GNU AGPL v3.0. Commercial licenses are also available.

Open Source

Eclipse Distribution License (EDL), v1.0.

Open Source

GPL version 2, commercial licence available

commercial

Limited free edition and free developer edition available

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

MongoDB available as DBaaS (MongoDB Atlas)

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.

MongoDB Atlas: Global multi-cloud database with unmatched data distribution and mobility across AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, built-in automation for resource and workload optimization, and so much more.
MongoDB Flex @ STACKIT offers managed MongoDB Instances with adjustable CPU, RAM, storage amount and speed, in enterprise grade to perfectly match all application requirements. All services are 100% GDPR-compliant.

Implementation language

Java

C++

Java

C++

Server operating systems

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Linux
OS X
Unix
Windows

FreeBSD
Linux
NetBSD
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

Although schema-free, documents of the same collection often follow the same structure. Optionally impose all or part of a schema by defining a JSON schema.

yes

RDF Schemas

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

string, integer, double, decimal, boolean, date, object_id, geospatial

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

full-text index on all search fields

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

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

Read-only SQL queries via the MongoDB Atlas SQL Interface

SQL-like query language (SphinxQL)

Splunk Search Processing Language for search commands

APIs and other access methods

Proprietary protocol

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

GraphQL
HTTP REST
Prisma
proprietary protocol using JSON

Java API
RIO

RDF Input/Output
Sail API
SeRQL

Sesame RDF Query Language
Sesame REST HTTP Protocol
SPARQL

Proprietary protocol

HTTP REST

Supported programming languages

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

Actionscript

unofficial driver
C
C#
C++
Clojure

unofficial driver
ColdFusion

unofficial driver
D

unofficial driver
Dart

unofficial driver
Delphi

unofficial driver
Erlang
Go
Groovy

unofficial driver
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Kotlin
Lisp

unofficial driver
Lua

unofficial driver
MatLab

unofficial driver
Perl
PHP
PowerShell

unofficial driver
Prolog

unofficial driver
Python
R

unofficial driver
Ruby
Rust
Scala
Smalltalk

unofficial driver
Swift

Java
PHP
Python

C++

unofficial client library
Java
Perl

unofficial client library
PHP
Python
Ruby

unofficial client library

C#
Java
JavaScript
PHP
Python
Ruby

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

JavaScript

yes

Triggers

yes

in MongoDB Atlas only

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

Sharding

Partitioned by hashed, ranged, or zoned sharding keys. Live resharding allows users to change their shard keys as an online operation with zero downtime.

none

Sharding

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

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

Multi-Source deployments with MongoDB Atlas Global Clusters
Source-replica replication

none

Multi-source 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

Eventual Consistency

can be individually decided for each read operation
Immediate Consistency

default behaviour

Eventual Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

typically not used, however similar functionality with DBRef possible

Transaction concepts

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

Atomicity and isolation are supported for single operations

Multi-document ACID Transactions with snapshot isolation

ACID

Isolation support depends on the API used

A 'Transaction' in Splunk has a different meaning: grouping related events into a single one for later searching

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

optional, enabled by default

yes

in-memory storage is supported as well

yes

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

yes

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

In-memory storage engine introduced with MongoDB version 3.2

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users can be defined per object

Access rights for 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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MongoDB provides an integrated suite of cloud database and data services to accelerate...
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Competitive advantages

No single point of failure ensures 100% availability . Operational simplicity for...
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Built around the flexible document data model and unified API, MongoDB is a developer...
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Typical application scenarios

Internet of Things (IOT), fraud detection applications, recommendation engines, product...
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AI-enriched intelligent apps (Continental, Telefonica, Iron Mountain) Internet of...
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Key customers

Apple, Netflix, Uber, ING,, Intuit,Fidelity, NY Times, Outbrain, BazaarVoice, Best...
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ADP, Adobe, Amadeus, AstraZeneca, Auto Trader, Barclays, BBVA, Bosch, Cisco, CERN,...
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Market metrics

Apache Cassandra is used by 40% of the Fortune 100.
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Hundreds of millions downloads, over 150,000+ Atlas clusters provisioned every month...
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Licensing and pricing models

Apache licenseÂ Pricing for commercial distributions provided by DataStax and available...
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MongoDB database server: Server-Side Public License (SSPL) . Commercial licenses...
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