TrustRadius: an HG Insights company

Save this comparison

Save this comparison

Add Product

Recommended Comparisons

    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Cassandra

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

    Microsoft SQL Server

    Score8.7 out of 10
    N/AMicrosoft SQL Server is a relational database.

    $1,418

    Per License

    Pricing
    CassandraMicrosoft SQL Server
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    Subscription
    $1,418.00
    Per License
    Enterprise
    $13,748.00
    Per License
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    CassandraMicrosoft SQL Server
    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
    CassandraMicrosoft SQL Server
    Considered Both Products
    Apache
    No answer on this topic
    Microsoft
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    No answers on this topic
    100%
    Would buy again
    53 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    No answers on this topic
    96%
    Delivers good value for the price
    45 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    No answers on this topic
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    53 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    No answers on this topic
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    39 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    No answers on this topic
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    45 Answers
    Best Alternatives
    CassandraMicrosoft SQL Server
    Small Businesses
    No answers on this topic
    Amazon RDS
    Score8.1 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    HBase
    Score7.3 out of 10
    SingleStore
    Score8.2 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Azure Cosmos DB
    Score9.1 out of 10
    SAP IQ
    Score5.5 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    CassandraMicrosoft SQL Server
    Likelihood to Recommend
    6.0
    (16 ratings)
    7.9
    (107 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    8.6
    (16 ratings)
    9.0
    (8 ratings)
    Usability
    7.0
    (1 ratings)
    7.6
    (17 ratings)
    Availability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Performance
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    Support Rating
    7.0
    (1 ratings)
    7.9
    (26 ratings)
    In-Person Training
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    Online Training
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    7.0
    (1 ratings)
    9.0
    (6 ratings)
    Configurability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Data Sharing and Collaboration
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (5 ratings)
    Data Sources
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (5 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    CassandraMicrosoft SQL Server
    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
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    Microsoft SQL is ubiquitous, while MySQL runs under the hood all over the place. Microsoft SQL is the platform taught in colleges and certification courses and is the one most likely to be used by businesses because it is backed by Microsoft. Its interface is friendly (well, as pleasant as SQL can be) and has been used by so many for so long that resources are freely available if you encounter any issues.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    • Easy to configure and use with Visual Studio and Dot Net
    • Easy integration with MSBI to perform data analysis
    • Data Security
    • Easy to understand and use
    • Very easy to export database and tables in the form of SQL query or a script
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    • Microsoft SQL Server Enterprise edition has a high cost but is the only edition which supports SQL Always On Availability Groups. It would be nice to include this feature in the Standard version.
    • Licensing of Microsoft SQL Server is a quite complex matter, it would be good to simplify licensing in the future. For example, per core vs per user CAL licensing, as well as complex licensing scenarios in the Cloud and on Edge locations.
    • It would be good to include native tools for converting Oracle, DB2, Postgresql and MySQL/MariaDB databases (schema and data) for import into Microsoft SQL Server.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    We understand that the Microsoft SQL Server will continue to advance, offering the same robust and reliable platform while adding new features that enable us, as a software center, to create a superior product. That provides excellent performance while reducing the hardware requirements and the total cost of ownership of our solution.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Usability
    Apache
    It’s great tool but it can be complicated when it comes administration and maintenance.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    SQL Server mostly 'just works' or generates error messages to help you sort out the trouble. You can usually count on the product to get the job done and keep an eye on your potential mistakes. Interaction with other Microsoft products makes operating as a Windows user pretty straight forward. Digging through the multitude of dialogs and wizards can be a pain, but the answer is usually there somewhere.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Reliability and Availability
    Apache
    No answers on this topic
    Microsoft
    Its does not have outages.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Performance
    Apache
    No answers on this topic
    Microsoft
    SSAS data cubes may some time slow down your Excel reports.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Support Rating
    Apache
    Sometimes instead giving straight answer, we ‘re getting transfered to talk professional service.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    We managed to handle most of our problems by looking into Microsoft's official documentation that has everything explained and almost every function has an example that illustrates in detail how a particular functionality works. Just like PowerShell has the ability to show you an example of how some cmdlet works, that is the case also here, and in my opinion, it is a very good practice and I like it.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    In-Person Training
    Apache
    No answers on this topic
    Microsoft
    It was good
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Online Training
    Apache
    No answers on this topic
    Microsoft
    very hands on and detailed training
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Implementation Rating
    Apache
    No answers on this topic
    Microsoft
    Other than SQL taking quite a bit of time to actually install there are no problems with installation. Even on hardware that has good performance SQL can still take close to an hour to install a typical server with management and reporting services.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    [Microsoft] SQL Server has a much better community and professional support and is overall just a more reliable system with Microsoft behind it. I've used MySQL in the past and SQL Server has just become more comfortable for me and is my go to RDBMS.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Scalability
    Apache
    No answers on this topic
    Microsoft
    SQL server does handle growing demands of a mid sized company.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    • Increased accuracy - We went from multiple users having different versions of an Excel spreadsheet to a single source of truth for our reporting.
    • Increased Efficiency - We can now generate reports at any time from a single source rather than multiple users spending their time collating data and generating reports.
    • Improved Security - Enterprise level security on a dedicated server rather than financial files on multiple laptop hard drives.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots