DBMS > Memcached vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. NCache vs. Snowflake

System Properties Comparison Memcached vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. NCache vs. Snowflake

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

In-memory key-value store, originally intended for caching

Globally distributed, horizontally scalable, multi-model database service

Open-Source and Enterprise in-memory Key-Value Store

Cloud-based data warehousing service for structured and semi-structured data

Primary database model

Key-value store

Document store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store
Wide column store

Key-value store

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Spatial DBMS

Document store
Search engine

Using distributed Lucene

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

Score	19.42
Rank	#32	Overall
	#4	Key-value stores

Score	29.04
Rank	#27	Overall
	#4	Document stores
	#2	Graph DBMS
	#3	Key-value stores
	#3	Wide column stores

Score	0.94
Rank	#195	Overall
	#29	Key-value stores

Score	121.33
Rank	#9	Overall
	#6	Relational DBMS

Website

www.memcached.org

azure.microsoft.com/services/cosmos-db

www.alachisoft.com/ncache

www.snowflake.com

Technical documentation

github.com/memcached/memcached/wiki

learn.microsoft.com/azure/cosmos-db

www.alachisoft.com/resources/docs

docs.snowflake.net/manuals/index.html

Developer

Danga Interactive

originally developed by Brad Fitzpatrick for LiveJournal

Microsoft

Alachisoft

Snowflake Computing Inc.

Initial release

2003

2014

2005

2014

Current release

1.6.25, March 2024

5.3.3, April 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

BSD license

commercial

Open Source

Enterprise Edition available

commercial

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

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Implementation language

C#, .NET, .NET Core, Java

Server operating systems

FreeBSD
Linux
OS X
Unix
Windows

hosted

Linux
Windows

hosted

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

support of semi-structured data formats (JSON, XML, Avro)

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

JSON types

partial

Supported data types are Lists, Queues, Hashsets, Dictionary and Counter

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

yes

All properties auto-indexed by default

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like query language

SQL-like query syntax and LINQ for searching the cache. Cache Synchronization with SQL Server using SQL dependency.

yes

APIs and other access methods

Proprietary protocol

DocumentDB API
Graph API (Gremlin)
MongoDB API
RESTful HTTP API
Table API

IDistributedCache
JCache
LINQ
Proprietary native API

CLI Client
JDBC
ODBC

Supported programming languages

.Net
C
C++
ColdFusion
Erlang
Java
Lisp
Lua
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

.Net
C#
Java
JavaScript
JavaScript (Node.js)
MongoDB client drivers written for various programming languages
Python

.Net
.Net Core
C#
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python
Scala

JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

JavaScript

support for stored procedures with SQL-Server CLR

user defined functions

Triggers

JavaScript

yes

Notifications

similar concept for controling cloud resources

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

yes

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

none

Repcached, a Memcached patch, provides this functionallity

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

yes, with selectable consistency level

yes

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

with Hadoop integration

Integration with Hadoop/HDInsight on Azure*

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Bounded Staleness
Consistent Prefix
Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Consistency level configurable on request level
Session Consistency

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency
Strong Eventual Consistency over WAN with Conflict Resolution using Bridge Topology

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

Multi-item ACID transactions with snapshot isolation within a partition

optimistic locking and pessimistic locking

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

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

yes

using SASL (Simple Authentication and Security Layer) protocol

Access rights can be defined down to the item level

Authentication to access the cache via Active Directory/LDAP (possible roles: user, administrator)

Users with fine-grained authorization concept, user roles and pluggable authentication

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

NCache has been the market leader in .NET Distributed Caching since 2005 . NCache...
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Competitive advantages

NCache is 100% .NET/ .NET Core based which fully supports ASP.NET Core Sessions ,...
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Typical application scenarios

NCache enables industries like retail, finance, banking IoT, travel, ecommerce, healthcare...
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Key customers

Bank of America, Citi, Natures Way, Charter Spectrum, Barclays, Henry Schein, GBM,...
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Market metrics

Market Leader in .NET Distributed Caching since 2005.
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Licensing and pricing models

NCache Open Source is free on an as-is basis without any support. NCache Enterprise...
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