DBMS > Cassandra vs. Riak KV vs. ScyllaDB vs. TerminusDB

System Properties Comparison Cassandra vs. Riak KV vs. ScyllaDB vs. TerminusDB

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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

Distributed, fault tolerant key-value store

Cassandra and DynamoDB compatible wide column store

Scalable Graph Database platform making enterprise data available by exploiting inferred entities and relationships

Primary database model

Wide column store

Key-value store

with links between data sets and object tags for the creation of secondary indexes

Wide column store

Graph DBMS

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

Key-value store

Document store
RDF store

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

Score	98.83
Rank	#12	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	4.01
Rank	#79	Overall
	#9	Key-value stores

Score	4.08
Rank	#76	Overall
	#5	Wide column stores

Score	0.23
Rank	#316	Overall
	#27	Graph DBMS

Website

cassandra.apache.org

www.scylladb.com

terminusdb.com

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

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

docs.scylladb.com

terminusdb.github.io/terminusdb/#

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

OpenSource, formerly Basho Technologies

ScyllaDB

DataChemist Ltd.

Initial release

2008

2009

2015

2018

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

3.2.0, December 2022

ScyllaDB Open Source 5.4.1, January 2024

11.0.0, January 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

Apache version 2, commercial enterprise edition

Open Source

Open Source (AGPL), commercial license available

Open Source

GPL V3

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

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Implementation language

Java

Erlang

C++

Prolog, Rust

Server operating systems

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
OS X

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.

Secondary indexes

restricted

only equality queries, not always the best performing solution

restricted

yes

cluster global secondary indices

SQL

Support of SQL

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

SQL-like DML and DDL statements (CQL)

SQL-like query language (WOQL)

APIs and other access methods

Proprietary protocol

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

HTTP API
Native Erlang Interface

Proprietary protocol (CQL)

compatible with CQL (Cassandra Query Language, an SQL-like language)
RESTful HTTP API (DynamoDB compatible)
Thrift

OWL
RESTful HTTP API
WOQL (Web Object Query Language)

Supported programming languages

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

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

For CQL interface: C#, C++, Clojure, Erlang, Go, Haskell, Java, JavaScript, Node.js, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, Rust, Scala
For DynamoDB interface: .Net, ColdFusion, Erlang, Groovy, Java, JavaScript, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby

JavaScript
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

Erlang

yes, Lua

yes

Triggers

yes

pre-commit hooks and post-commit hooks

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

Sharding

Graph 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

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

Journaling Streams

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

Eventual Consistency
Tunable Consistency

can be individually decided for each write operation

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

links between data sets can be stored

yes

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

in-memory journaling

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

in-memory tables

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users can be defined per object

yes, using Riak Security

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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ScyllaDB is engineered to deliver predictable performance at scale. It’s adopted...
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Competitive advantages

No single point of failure ensures 100% availability . Operational simplicity for...
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Highly-performant (efficiently utilizes full resources of a node and network; millions...
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Typical application scenarios

Internet of Things (IOT), fraud detection applications, recommendation engines, product...
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ScyllaDB is ideal for applications that require high throughput and low latency at...
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Key customers

Apple, Netflix, Uber, ING,, Intuit,Fidelity, NY Times, Outbrain, BazaarVoice, Best...
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Discord, Epic Games, Expedia, Zillow, Comcast, Disney+ Hotstar, Samsung, ShareChat,...
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Market metrics

Cassandra is used by 40% of the Fortune 100.
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ScyllaDB typically offers ~75% total cost of ownership savings, with ~5X higher throughput...
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Licensing and pricing models

Apache licenseÂ Pricing for commercial distributions provided by DataStax and available...
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ScyllaDB Open Source - free open source software (AGPL) ScyllaDB Enterprise - subscription-based...
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