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Azure Databricks VS Apache Cassandra

Compare Azure Databricks VS Apache Cassandra and see what are their differences

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Azure Databricks logo Azure Databricks

Azure Databricks is a fast, easy, and collaborative Apache Spark-based big data analytics service designed for data science and data engineering.

Apache Cassandra logo Apache Cassandra

The Apache Cassandra database is the right choice when you need scalability and high availability without compromising performance.
  • Azure Databricks Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-04-02
  • Apache Cassandra Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-04-17

Azure Databricks features and specs

  • Scalability
    Azure Databricks enables easy scaling of workloads up or down, allowing users to handle large volumes of data and perform distributed processing efficiently.
  • Integration
    Seamlessly integrates with other Azure services, such as Azure Data Lake Storage and Azure SQL Data Warehouse, facilitating a streamlined data pipeline.
  • Collaboration
    Offers collaborative features like notebooks that allow multiple users to work together easily on data analytics projects.
  • Performance Optimization
    Built on top of Apache Spark, Azure Databricks provides high performance and optimized execution for data engineering and machine learning tasks.
  • Managed Service
    As a fully managed service, it handles infrastructure provisioning and maintenance, enabling users to focus on data insights rather than backend management.

Possible disadvantages of Azure Databricks

  • Cost
    Azure Databricks can be expensive, particularly for large-scale and long-running workloads, which may be a concern for budget-conscious organizations.
  • Complexity
    Despite its capabilities, Azure Databricks may have a steep learning curve, especially for users not familiar with Apache Spark.
  • Vendor Lock-in
    Leveraging Azure-specific services can lead to vendor lock-in, making it challenging to migrate workloads and data to other cloud platforms.
  • Limited Offline Capabilities
    As a cloud-native service, it requires an active internet connection and might not suit scenarios that require offline processing.
  • Compliance Concerns
    Due to Azure Databricks' integration with Azure, users need to carefully manage compliance and data governance, which might be complex in multi-regional deployments.

Apache Cassandra features and specs

  • Scalability
    Apache Cassandra is designed for linear scalability and can handle large volumes of data across many commodity servers without a single point of failure.
  • High Availability
    Cassandra ensures high availability by replicating data across multiple nodes. Even if some nodes fail, the system remains operational.
  • Performance
    It provides fast writes and reads by using a peer-to-peer architecture, making it highly suitable for applications requiring quick data access.
  • Flexible Data Model
    Cassandra supports a flexible schema, allowing users to add new columns to a table at any time, making it adaptable for various use cases.
  • Geographical Distribution
    Data can be distributed across multiple data centers, ensuring low-latency access for geographically distributed users.
  • No Single Point of Failure
    Its decentralized nature ensures there is no single point of failure, which enhances resilience and fault-tolerance.

Possible disadvantages of Apache Cassandra

  • Complexity
    Managing and configuring Cassandra can be complex, requiring specialized knowledge and skills for optimal performance.
  • Eventual Consistency
    Cassandra follows an eventual consistency model, meaning that there might be a delay before all nodes have the latest data, which may not be suitable for all use cases.
  • Write-heavy Operations
    Although Cassandra handles writes efficiently, write-heavy workloads can lead to compaction issues and increased read latency.
  • Limited Query Capabilities
    Cassandra's query capabilities are relatively limited compared to traditional RDBMS, lacking support for complex joins and aggregations.
  • Maintenance Overhead
    Regular maintenance tasks such as node repair and compaction are necessary to ensure optimal performance, adding to the administrative overhead.
  • Tooling and Ecosystem
    While the ecosystem for Cassandra is growing, it is still not as extensive or mature as those for some other database technologies.

Azure Databricks videos

Azure Databricks is Easier Than You Think

More videos:

  • Review - Ingest, prepare & transform using Azure Databricks & Data Factory | Azure Friday
  • Review - Azure Databricks - What's new! | DB102

Apache Cassandra videos

Course Intro | DS101: Introduction to Apache Cassandra™

More videos:

  • Review - Introduction to Apache Cassandra™

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Azure Databricks and Apache Cassandra)
Technical Computing
100 100%
0% 0
Databases
0 0%
100% 100
Office & Productivity
100 100%
0% 0
NoSQL Databases
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Azure Databricks and Apache Cassandra

Azure Databricks Reviews

10 Best Big Data Analytics Tools For Reporting In 2022
Azure Databricks is a data analytics tool optimized for Microsoft’s Azure cloud services solution. It provides three development environments for data-intensive apps, namely Databricks SQL, Databricks Machine Learning, and Databricks Data Science & Engineering.The platform supports languages including Python, Java, R, Scala, and SQL, plus data science frameworks and...
Source: theqalead.com

Apache Cassandra Reviews

16 Top Big Data Analytics Tools You Should Know About
Application Areas: If you want to work with SQL-like data types on a No-SQL database, Cassandra is a good choice. It is a popular pick in the IoT, fraud detection applications, recommendation engines, product catalogs and playlists, and messaging applications, providing fast real-time insights.
9 Best MongoDB alternatives in 2019
The Apache Cassandra is an ideal choice for you if you want scalability and high availability without affecting its performance. This MongoDB alternative tool offers support for replicating across multiple datacenters.
Source: www.guru99.com

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Apache Cassandra seems to be a lot more popular than Azure Databricks. While we know about 44 links to Apache Cassandra, we've tracked only 2 mentions of Azure Databricks. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Azure Databricks mentions (2)

  • Top 30 Microsoft Azure Services
    In the big data space, Azure offers Azure Databricks. This is an Apache Spark big data analytics and machine learning service over a Distributed File System. The distributed cluster of nodes running analytics and AI operations in parallel allow for fast processing of large volumes of data and integration with popular machine learning libraries such as PyTorch unleash endless possibilities for custom ML. - Source: dev.to / almost 4 years ago
  • ZooKeeper-free Kafka is out. First Demo
    https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/databricks. - Source: Hacker News / about 4 years ago

Apache Cassandra mentions (44)

  • Why You Shouldn’t Invest In Vector Databases?
    In fact, even in the absence of these commercial databases, users can effortlessly install PostgreSQL and leverage its built-in pgvector functionality for vector search. PostgreSQL stands as the benchmark in the realm of open-source databases, offering comprehensive support across various domains of database management. It excels in transaction processing (e.g., CockroachDB), online analytics (e.g., DuckDB),... - Source: dev.to / 21 days ago
  • Data integrity in Ably Pub/Sub
    All messages are persisted durably for two minutes, but Pub/Sub channels can be configured to persist messages for longer periods of time using the persisted messages feature. Persisted messages are additionally written to Cassandra. Multiple copies of the message are stored in a quorum of globally-distributed Cassandra nodes. - Source: dev.to / 6 months ago
  • Which Database is Perfect for You? A Comprehensive Guide to MySQL, PostgreSQL, NoSQL, and More
    Cassandra is a highly scalable, distributed NoSQL database designed to handle large amounts of data across many commodity servers without a single point of failure. - Source: dev.to / 11 months ago
  • Consistent Hashing: An Overview and Implementation in Golang
    Distributed storage Distributed storage systems like Cassandra, DynamoDB, and Voldemort also use consistent hashing. In these systems, data is partitioned across many servers. Consistent hashing is used to map data to the servers that store the data. When new servers are added or removed, consistent hashing minimizes the amount of data that needs to be remapped to different servers. - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
  • Understanding SQL vs. NoSQL Databases: A Beginner's Guide
    On the other hand, NoSQL databases are non-relational databases. They store data in flexible, JSON-like documents, key-value pairs, or wide-column stores. Examples include MongoDB, Couchbase, and Cassandra. - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Azure Databricks and Apache Cassandra, you can also consider the following products

IBM Cloud Pak for Data - Move to cloud faster with IBM Cloud Paks running on Red Hat OpenShift – fully integrated, open, containerized and secure solutions certified by IBM.

Redis - Redis is an open source in-memory data structure project implementing a distributed, in-memory key-value database with optional durability.

MyAnalytics - MyAnalytics, now rebranded to Microsoft Viva Insights, is a customizable suite of tools that integrates with Office 365 to drive employee engagement and increase productivity.

MongoDB - MongoDB (from "humongous") is a scalable, high-performance NoSQL database.

MicroStrategy - MicroStrategy is a cloud-based platform providing business intelligence, mobile intelligence and network applications.

ArangoDB - A distributed open-source database with a flexible data model for documents, graphs, and key-values.