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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Cassandra

    Score9 out of 10
    N/ACassandra is a no-SQL database from Apache.N/A

    Apache Kafka

    Score8.9 out of 10
    N/AApache Kafka is an open-source stream processing platform developed by the Apache Software Foundation written in Scala and Java. The Kafka event streaming platform is used by thousands of companies for high-performance data pipelines, streaming analytics, data integration, and mission-critical applications.N/A
    Pricing
    CassandraApache Kafka
    Editions & Modules
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    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    CassandraApache Kafka
    Free Trial
    NoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    CassandraApache Kafka
    Considered Both Products
    Apache
    Chose Cassandra
    Cassandra has its own use case. It performs very well as a data store. Data can be written to it at a high rate. It cannot be compared to traditional RDBMS like Oracle, because they all have their own usage. Even MongoDB, which is somewhat similar, cannot be stacked up against …
    Incentivized
    Apache
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    No answers on this topic
    94%
    Would buy again
    16 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    No answers on this topic
    94%
    Delivers good value for the price
    16 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    No answers on this topic
    94%
    Happy with the feature set
    16 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    No answers on this topic
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    13 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    No answers on this topic
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    17 Answers
    Best Alternatives
    CassandraApache Kafka
    Small Businesses
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Medium-sized Companies
    HBase
    Score7.3 out of 10
    IBM MQ
    Score9.2 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Azure Cosmos DB
    Score9.1 out of 10
    TIBCO Messaging
    Score7.6 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    CassandraApache Kafka
    Likelihood to Recommend
    6.0
    (16 ratings)
    8.0
    (19 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    8.6
    (16 ratings)
    9.0
    (2 ratings)
    Usability
    7.0
    (1 ratings)
    8.0
    (2 ratings)
    Support Rating
    7.0
    (1 ratings)
    8.4
    (4 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    7.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    CassandraApache Kafka
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Apache
    Apache Cassandra is a NoSQL database and well suited where you need highly available, linearly scalable, tunable consistency and high performance across varying workloads. It has worked well for our use cases, and I shared my experiences to use it effectively at the last Cassandra summit! http://bit.ly/1Ok56TK It is a NoSQL database, finally you can tune it to be strongly consistent and successfully use it as such. However those are not usual patterns, as you negotiate on latency. It works well if you require that. If your use case needs strongly consistent environments with semantics of a relational database or if the use case needs a data warehouse, or if you need NoSQL with ACID transactions, Apache Cassandra may not be the optimum choice.
    Incentivized
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    Apache
    Apache Kafka is well-suited for most data-streaming use cases. Amazon Kinesis and Azure EventHubs, unless you have a specific use case where using those cloud PaAS for your data lakes, once set up well, Apache Kafka will take care of everything else in the background. Azure EventHubs, is good for cross-cloud use cases, and Amazon Kinesis - I have no real-world experience. But I believe it is the same.
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    Pros
    Apache
    • Continuous availability: as a fully distributed database (no master nodes), we can update nodes with rolling restarts and accommodate minor outages without impacting our customer services.
    • Linear scalability: for every unit of compute that you add, you get an equivalent unit of capacity. The same application can scale from a single developer's laptop to a web-scale service with billions of rows in a table.
    • Amazing performance: if you design your data model correctly, bearing in mind the queries you need to answer, you can get answers in milliseconds.
    • Time-series data: Cassandra excels at recording, processing, and retrieving time-series data. It's a simple matter to version everything and simply record what happens, rather than going back and editing things. Then, you can compute things from the recorded history.
    Incentivized
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    Apache
    • Really easy to configure. I've used other message brokers such as RabbitMQ and compared to them, Kafka's configurations are very easy to understand and tweak.
    • Very scalable: easily configured to run on multiple nodes allowing for ease of parallelism (assuming your queues/topics don't have to be consumed in the exact same order the messages were delivered)
    • Not exactly a feature, but I trust Kafka will be around for at least another decade because active development has continued to be strong and there's a lot of financial backing from Confluent and LinkedIn, and probably many other companies who are using it (which, anecdotally, is many).
    Incentivized
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    Cons
    Apache
    • Cassandra runs on the JVM and therefor may require a lot of GC tuning for read/write intensive applications.
    • Requires manual periodic maintenance - for example it is recommended to run a cleanup on a regular basis.
    • There are a lot of knobs and buttons to configure the system. For many cases the default configuration will be sufficient, but if its not - you will need significant ramp up on the inner workings of Cassandra in order to effectively tune it.
    Incentivized
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    Apache
    • Sometimes it becomes difficult to monitor our Kafka deployments. We've been able to overcome it largely using AWS MSK, a managed service for Apache Kafka, but a separate monitoring dashboard would have been great.
    • Simplify the process for local deployment of Kafka and provide a user interface to get visibility into the different topics and the messages being processed.
    • Learning curve around creation of broker and topics could be simplified
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    Likelihood to Renew
    Apache
    I would recommend Cassandra DB to those who know their use case very well, as well as know how they are going to store and retrieve data. If you need a guarantee in data storage and retrieval, and a DB that can be linearly grown by adding nodes across availability zones and regions, then this is the database you should choose.
    Incentivized
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    Apache
    Kafka is quickly becoming core product of the organization, indeed it is replacing older messaging systems. No better alternatives found yet
    Incentivized
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    Usability
    Apache
    It’s great tool but it can be complicated when it comes administration and maintenance.
    Incentivized
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    Apache
    Apache Kafka is highly recommended to develop loosely coupled, real-time processing applications. Also, Apache Kafka provides property based configuration. Producer, Consumer and broker contain their own separate property file
    Incentivized
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    Support Rating
    Apache
    Sometimes instead giving straight answer, we ‘re getting transfered to talk professional service.
    Incentivized
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    Apache
    Support for Apache Kafka (if willing to pay) is available from Confluent that includes the same time that created Kafka at Linkedin so they know this software in and out. Moreover, Apache Kafka is well known and best practices documents and deployment scenarios are easily available for download. For example, from eBay, Linkedin, Uber, and NYTimes.
    Incentivized
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    Alternatives Considered
    Apache
    We evaluated MongoDB also, but don't like the single point failure possibility. The HBase coupled us too tightly to the Hadoop world while we prefer more technical flexibility. Also HBase is designed for "cold"/old historical data lake use cases and is not typically used for web and mobile applications due to its performance concern. Cassandra, by contrast, offers the availability and performance necessary for developing highly available applications. Furthermore, the Hadoop technology stack is typically deployed in a single location, while in the big international enterprise context, we demand the feasibility for deployment across countries and continents, hence finally we are favor of Cassandra
    Incentivized
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    Apache
    I used other messaging/queue solutions that are a lot more basic than Confluent Kafka, as well as another solution that is no longer in the market called Xively, which was bought and "buried" by Google. In comparison, these solutions offer way fewer functionalities and respond to other needs.
    Incentivized
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    Return on Investment
    Apache
    • I have no experience with this but from the blogs and news what I believe is that in businesses where there is high demand for scalability, Cassandra is a good choice to go for.
    • Since it works on CQL, it is quite familiar with SQL in understanding therefore it does not prevent a new employee to start in learning and having the Cassandra experience at an industrial level.
    Incentivized
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    Apache
    • Positive: Get a quick and reliable pub/sub model implemented - data across components flows easily.
    • Positive: it's scalable so we can develop small and scale for real-world scenarios
    • Negative: it's easy to get into a confusing situation if you are not experienced yet or something strange has happened (rare, but it does). Troubleshooting such situations can take time and effort.
    Incentivized
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