DBMS > Cassandra vs. NebulaGraph vs. RDF4J vs. Sphinx

System Properties Comparison Cassandra vs. NebulaGraph vs. RDF4J vs. Sphinx

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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

A distributed, linear scalable, high perfomant Graph DBMS

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

Primary database model

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

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

Score	103.86
Rank	#12	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	2.12
Rank	#125	Overall
	#10	Graph DBMS

Score	0.71
Rank	#231	Overall
	#9	RDF stores

Score	6.03
Rank	#60	Overall
	#6	Search engines

Website

cassandra.apache.org

github.com/vesoft-inc/nebula
www.nebula-graph.io

rdf4j.org

sphinxsearch.com

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

docs.nebula-graph.io

rdf4j.org/documentation

sphinxsearch.com/docs

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Vesoft Inc.

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

Sphinx Technologies Inc.

Initial release

2008

2019

2004

2001

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

3.5.1, February 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

Apache Version 2.0 + Common Clause 1.0

Open Source

Eclipse Distribution License (EDL), v1.0.

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

Providers of DBaaS offerings, please contact us to be listed.

Astra DB: Multi-cloud DBaaS built on Apache Cassandra.

Implementation language

Java

C++

Java

C++

Server operating systems

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux

Linux
OS X
Unix
Windows

FreeBSD
Linux
NetBSD
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

Strong typed schema

yes

RDF Schemas

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.

Secondary indexes

restricted

only equality queries, not always the best performing solution

yes

Nebula Graph internally uses the Key-Value store RocksDB for persistency. The vertices, edges, and their properties are stored as Key while their values are stored as Value. The primary indexes are per Key and secondary indexes are per Value.

yes

full-text index on all search fields

SQL

Support of SQL

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

SQL-like query language

SQL-like query language (SphinxQL)

APIs and other access methods

Proprietary protocol

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

Browser interface
console (shell)
Cypher Query Language
GO Object Graph Mapper
Java Object Graph Mapper
NGBatis

ORM framework for NebulaGraph and Spring-Boot
Proprietary native API
Python Object Graph Mapper
Query language nGQL

Java API
RIO

RDF Input/Output
Sail API
SeRQL

Sesame RDF Query Language
Sesame REST HTTP Protocol
SPARQL

Proprietary protocol

Supported programming languages

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

.Net
C++
Go
Java
PHP
Python

Java
PHP
Python

C++

unofficial client library
Java
Perl

unofficial client library
PHP
Python
Ruby

unofficial client library

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

user defined functions

yes

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

Sharding

none

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

Causal Clustering using Raft protocol

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

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Relationships in graphs

Transaction concepts

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

Atomicity and isolation are supported for single operations

ACID

Isolation support depends on the API used

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

using RocksDB

yes

in-memory storage is supported as well

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

Role-based access control

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Apache Cassandra is the leading NoSQL, distributed database management system, well...
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NebulaGraph is a truly distributed, linearly scalable, lightning-fast graph database,...
» more

Competitive advantages

No single point of failure ensures 100% availability . Operational simplicity for...
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NebulaGraph boasts the world's only graph database solution that is able to host...
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Typical application scenarios

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

Social networking Fraud detection Knowledge graph Data warehouse management Anti...
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Key customers

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

Companies from a variety of industries have implemented NebulaGraph Database in production,...
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Market metrics

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

At our very early stage, NebulaGraph has already received over 10,000 stars on GitHub...
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Licensing and pricing models

Apache licenseÂ Pricing for commercial distributions provided by DataStax and available...
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NebulaGraph is open source and free to use under Apache 2.0 license.
» more

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