DBMS > Cassandra vs. Newts vs. RDF4J vs. Weaviate vs. YugabyteDB

System Properties Comparison Cassandra vs. Newts vs. RDF4J vs. Weaviate vs. YugabyteDB

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Wide-column store based on ideas of BigTable and DynamoDB

Optimized for write access

Time Series DBMS based on Cassandra

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

An AI-native realtime vector database engine that integrates scalable machine learning models.

High-performance distributed SQL database for global, internet-scale applications. Wire and feature compatible with PostgreSQL.

Primary database model

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

Document store
Wide column store

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

Score	101.89
Rank	#12	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	0.00
Rank	#383	Overall
	#41	Time Series DBMS

Score	0.69
Rank	#230	Overall
	#9	RDF stores

Score	1.73
Rank	#143	Overall
	#5	Vector DBMS

Score	2.91
Rank	#102	Overall
	#51	Relational DBMS

Website

cassandra.apache.org

opennms.github.io/newts

rdf4j.org

github.com/weaviate/weaviate
weaviate.io

www.yugabyte.com

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

github.com/OpenNMS/newts/wiki

rdf4j.org/documentation

weaviate.io/developers/weaviate

docs.yugabyte.com
github.com/yugabyte/yugabyte-db

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

OpenNMS Group

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

Weaviate B.V.

Yugabyte Inc.

Initial release

2008

2014

2004

2019

2017

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

1.19, May 2023

2.19, September 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

Eclipse Distribution License (EDL), v1.0.

Open Source

commercial license available with Weaviate Enterprise

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.

YugabyteDB Managed is the fully managed database-as-a-service offering of YugabyteDB. Get started quickly, and effortlessly ensure continuous availability and limitless scale of your cloud native applications.

Implementation language

Java

C and C++

Server operating systems

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
OS X
Unix
Windows

Linux
OS X

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

RDF Schemas

yes, maps to GraphQL interface

depending on used data model

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

string, int, float, geo point, date, cross reference, fuzzy references

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

all data objects are indexed in a semantic vector space (the Contextionary), all primitive fields are indexed

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

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

GraphQL is used as query language

yes, PostgreSQL compatible

APIs and other access methods

Proprietary protocol

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

HTTP REST
Java API

Java API
RIO

RDF Input/Output
Sail API
SeRQL

Sesame RDF Query Language
Sesame REST HTTP Protocol
SPARQL

GraphQL query language
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

JDBC
YCQL, an SQL-based flexible-schema API with its roots in Cassandra Query Language
YSQL - a fully relational SQL API that is wire compatible with the SQL language in PostgreSQL

Supported programming languages

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

Java

Java
PHP
Python

JavaScript / TypeScript
Python

C
C#
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby
Rust
Scala

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

sql, plpgsql, C

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

Sharding

based on Cassandra

none

Sharding

Hash and Range Sharding, row-level geo-partitioning

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

selectable replication factor

based on Cassandra

none

yes

Based on Raft distributed consensus protocol, minimum 3 replicas for continuous availability

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

based on Cassandra
Immediate Consistency

based on Cassandra

Eventual Consistency

Strong consistency on writes and tunable consistency on reads

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 support depends on the API used

Distributed ACID with Serializable & Snapshot Isolation. Inspired by Google Spanner architecture.

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

in-memory storage is supported as well

yes

based on RocksDB

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

API Keys
OpenID Connect Discovery

yes

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Apache Cassandra is the leading NoSQL, distributed database management system, well...
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Weaviate is an open source vector database that is robust, scalable, cloud-native,...
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YugabyteDB is an open source distributed SQL database for cloud native transactional...
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Competitive advantages

No single point of failure ensures 100% availability . Operational simplicity for...
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Flexible deployment - Free, open source or fully-managed cloud vector database service...
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PostgreSQL compatible: Get instantly productive with a PostgreSQL compatible RDBMS....
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Typical application scenarios

Internet of Things (IOT), fraud detection applications, recommendation engines, product...
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As a database supporting the development of generative AI and semantic search applications...
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Systems of record and engagement for cloud native applications that require resilience,...
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Key customers

Apple, Netflix, Uber, ING,, Intuit,Fidelity, NY Times, Outbrain, BazaarVoice, Best...
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All companies that have data.
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Market metrics

Cassandra is used by 40% of the Fortune 100.
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As of mid 2023: Over 2 million open source downloads 3500+ Weaviate Slack community...
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2 Million+ lifetime clusters deployed, 6.5K+ GitHub stars, 7K YugabyteDB Community...
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Licensing and pricing models

Apache licenseÂ Pricing for commercial distributions provided by DataStax and available...
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Weaviate is open-source, and free to use. Weaviate is also available as a fully managed...
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Apache 2.0 license for the database
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