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ArangoDB vs Cassandra vs Couchbase: What are the differences?
Introduction:
ArangoDB, Cassandra, and Couchbase are all popular databases with their own unique features and use cases. Understanding the key differences between these databases can help in making an informed decision on which one to choose for a specific project or application.
Data Model: ArangoDB is a multi-model database that supports key/value, document, and graph data models within the same database. Cassandra is a wide-column store NoSQL database that is specifically optimized for write-heavy workloads. Couchbase is a NoSQL database that primarily functions as a key-value store but also supports JSON document storage.
Consistency and Partitions: ArangoDB provides Multi-Master replication with synchronous replication for strong consistency. Cassandra offers eventual consistency with tunable consistency levels and allows for easy distribution of data across multiple nodes. Couchbase supports eventual consistency as well but also offers strong consistency levels for transactions.
Query Language: ArangoDB uses AQL (ArangoDB Query Language) which is SQL-like and allows for complex queries involving joins, nested queries, and transactions. Cassandra uses CQL (Cassandra Query Language) which is similar to SQL but has limitations due to its distributed nature. Couchbase supports N1QL (SQL for JSON) which is a SQL-like query language that simplifies querying JSON documents.
Scalability: ArangoDB can scale both vertically and horizontally, making it suitable for a wide range of applications. Cassandra is highly scalable horizontally and can handle large amounts of data and traffic. Couchbase also offers horizontal scalability with built-in sharding and rebalancing mechanisms.
Data Distribution: ArangoDB uses a master-slave architecture for data distribution and replication, allowing for fault tolerance and high availability. Cassandra uses a decentralized peer-to-peer architecture with no single point of failure and automatic data distribution. Couchbase utilizes a distributed architecture with built-in data replication for high availability and fault tolerance.
Use Cases: ArangoDB is well-suited for applications requiring flexible data models and complex querying capabilities. Cassandra is widely used for real-time applications that require high availability and scalability. Couchbase is often chosen for caching, session storage, and other use cases that benefit from a distributed key-value store.
In Summary, understanding the key differences between ArangoDB, Cassandra, and Couchbase can help in choosing the right database for specific project requirements.
Hey, we want to build a referral campaign mechanism that will probably contain millions of records within the next few years. We want fast read access based on IDs or some indexes, and isolation is crucial as some listeners will try to update the same document at the same time. What's your suggestion between Couchbase and MongoDB? Thanks!
I am biased (work for Scylla) but it sounds like a KV/wide column would be better in this use case. Document/schema free/lite DBs data stores are easier to get up and running on but are not as scalable (generally) as NoSQL flavors that require a more rigid data model like ScyllaDB. If your data volumes are going to be 10s of TB and transactions per sec 10s of 1000s (or more), look at Scylla. We have something called lightweight transactions (LWT) that can get you consistency.
I have found MongoDB highly consistent and highly available. It suits your needs. We usually trade off partion tolerance fot this. Having said that, I am little biased in recommendation as I haven't had much experience with couchbase on production.
Developing a solution that collects Telemetry Data from different devices, nearly 1000 devices minimum and maximum 12000. Each device is sending 2 packets in 1 second. This is time-series data, and this data definition and different reports are saved on PostgreSQL. Like Building information, maintenance records, etc. I want to know about the best solution. This data is required for Math and ML to run different algorithms. Also, data is raw without definitions and information stored in PostgreSQL. Initially, I went with TimescaleDB due to PostgreSQL support, but to increase in sites, I started facing many issues with timescale DB in terms of flexibility of storing data.
My major requirement is also the replication of the database for reporting and different purposes. You may also suggest other options other than Druid and Cassandra. But an open source solution is appreciated.
Hi Umair, Did you try MongoDB. We are using MongoDB on a production environment and collecting data from devices like your scenario. We have a MongoDB cluster with three replicas. Data from devices are being written to the master node and real-time dashboard UI is using the secondary nodes for read operations. With this setup write operations are not affected by read operations too.
We Have thousands of .pdf docs generated from the same form but with lots of variability. We need to extract data from open text and more important - from tables inside the docs. The output of Couchbase/Mongo will be one row per document for backend processing. ADOBE renders the tables in an unusable form.
I prefer MongoDB due to own experience with migration of old archive of pdf and meta-data to a new “archive”. The biggest advantage is speed of filters output - a new archive is way faster and reliable then the old one - but also the the easy programming of MongoDB with many code snippets and examples available. I have no personal experience so far with Couchbase. From the architecture point of view both options are OK - go for the one you like.
I would like to suggest MongoDB or ArangoDB (can't choose both, so ArangoDB). MongoDB is more mature, but ArangoDB is more interesting if you will need to bring graph database ideas to solution. For example if some data or some documents are interlinked, then probably ArangoDB is a best solution.
To process tables we used Abbyy software stack. It's great on table extraction.
If you can select text with mouse drag in PDF. Use pdftotext it is fast! You can install it on server with command "apt-get install poppler-utils". Use it like "pdftotext -layout /path-to-your-file". In same folder it will make text file with line by line content. There is few classes on git stacks that you can use, also.
The problem I have is - we need to process & change(update/insert) 55M Data every 2 min and this updated data to be available for Rest API for Filtering / Selection. Response time for Rest API should be less than 1 sec.
The most important factors for me are processing and storing time of 2 min. There need to be 2 views of Data One is for Selection & 2. Changed data.
Scylla can handle 1M/s events with a simple data model quite easily. The api to query is CQL, we have REST api but that's for control/monitoring
Cassandra is quite capable of the task, in a highly available way, given appropriate scaling of the system. Remember that updates are only inserts, and that efficient retrieval is only by key (which can be a complex key). Talking of keys, make sure that the keys are well distributed.
i love syclla for pet projects however it's license which is based on server model is an issue. thus i recommend cassandra
By 55M do you mean 55 million entity changes per 2 minutes? It is relatively high, means almost 460k per second. If I had to choose between Scylla or Cassandra, I would opt for Scylla as it is promising better performance for simple operations. However, maybe it would be worth to consider yet another alternative technology. Take into consideration required consistency, reliability and high availability and you may realize that there are more suitable once. Rest API should not be the main driver, because you can always develop the API yourself, if not supported by given technology.
After using couchbase for over 4 years, we migrated to MongoDB and that was the best decision ever! I'm very disappointed with Couchbase's technical performance. Even though we received enterprise support and were a listed Couchbase Partner, the experience was horrible. With every contact, the sales team was trying to get me on a $7k+ license for access to features all other open source NoSQL databases get for free.
Here's why you should not use Couchbase
Full-text search Queries The full-text search often returns a different number of results if you run the same query multiple types
N1QL queries Configuring the indexes correctly is next to impossible. It's poorly documented and nobody seems to know what to do, even the Couchbase support engineers have no clue what they are doing.
Community support I posted several problems on the forum and I never once received a useful answer
Enterprise support It's very expensive. $7k+. The team constantly tried to get me to buy even though the community edition wasn't working great
Autonomous Operator It's actually just a poorly configured Kubernetes role that no matter what I did, I couldn't get it to work. The support team was useless. Same lack of documentation. If you do get it to work, you need 6 servers at least to meet their minimum requirements.
Couchbase cloud Typical for Couchbase, the user experience is awful and I could never get it to work.
Minimum requirements
The minimum requirements in production are 6 servers. On AWS the calculated monthly cost would be ~$600
. We achieved better performance using a $16
MongoDB instance on the Mongo Atlas Cloud
writing queries is a nightmare While N1QL is similar to SQL and it's easier to write because of the familiarity, that isn't entirely true. The "smart index" that Couchbase advertises is not smart at all. Creating an index with 5 fields, and only using 4 of them won't result in Couchbase using the same index, so you have to create a new one.
Couchbase UI
The UI that comes with every database deployment is full of bugs, barely functional and the developer experience is poor. When I asked Couchbase about it, they basically said they don't care because real developers use SQL directly from code
Consumes too much RAM
Couchbase is shipped with a smaller Memcached instance to handle the in-memory cache. Memcached ends up using 8 GB of RAM for 5000 documents
! I'm not kidding! We had less than 5000 docs on a Couchbase instance and less than 20 indexes and RAM consumption was always over 8 GB
Memory allocations are useless I asked the Couchbase team a question: If a bucket has 1 GB allocated, what happens when I have more than 1GB stored? Does it overflow? Does it cache somewhere? Do I get an error? I always received the same answer: If you buy the Couchbase enterprise then we can guide you.
We implemented our first large scale EPR application from naologic.com using CouchDB .
Very fast, replication works great, doesn't consume much RAM, queries are blazing fast but we found a problem: the queries were very hard to write, it took a long time to figure out the API, we had to go and write our own @nodejs library to make it work properly.
It lost most of its support. Since then, we migrated to Couchbase and the learning curve was steep but all worth it. Memcached indexing out of the box, full text search works great.
Pros of ArangoDB
- Grahps and documents in one DB37
- Intuitive and rich query language26
- Good documentation25
- Open source25
- Joins for collections21
- Foxx is great platform15
- Great out of the box web interface with API playground14
- Good driver support6
- Low maintenance efforts6
- Clustering6
- Easy microservice creation with foxx5
- You can write true backendless apps4
- Managed solution available2
- Performance0
Pros of Cassandra
- Distributed119
- High performance98
- High availability81
- Easy scalability74
- Replication53
- Reliable26
- Multi datacenter deployments26
- Schema optional10
- OLTP9
- Open source8
- Workload separation (via MDC)2
- Fast1
Pros of Couchbase
- High performance18
- Flexible data model, easy scalability, extremely fast18
- Mobile app support9
- You can query it with Ansi-92 SQL7
- All nodes can be read/write6
- Equal nodes in cluster, allowing fast, flexible changes5
- Both a key-value store and document (JSON) db5
- Open source, community and enterprise editions5
- Automatic configuration of sharding4
- Local cache capability4
- Easy setup3
- Linearly scalable, useful to large number of tps3
- Easy cluster administration3
- Cross data center replication3
- SDKs in popular programming languages3
- Elasticsearch connector3
- Web based management, query and monitoring panel3
- Map reduce views2
- DBaaS available2
- NoSQL2
- Buckets, Scopes, Collections & Documents1
- FTS + SQL together1
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Cons of ArangoDB
- Web ui has still room for improvement3
- No support for blueprints standard, using custom AQL2
Cons of Cassandra
- Reliability of replication3
- Size1
- Updates1
Cons of Couchbase
- Terrible query language3