What is the Difference Between HBase and MongoDB and Cassandra

The main difference between HBase and MongoDB and Cassandra is that the HBase and Cassandra are column-oriented databases while the MongoDB is a document-oriented database.

Big data refers to a large amount of data. It has three main properties: volume, velocity and variety. Volume refers to the amount of data while velocity refers to the generation speed of data, and variety refers to the type of data. The usual relational databases are not effective to store this massive amount of data. Non-relational databases are the solution to this issue. They are also called NoSQL databases. HBase, MongoDB and Cassandra are three NoSQL databases. These databases allow users to store a huge amount of data and access them randomly.

Key Areas Covered

1. What is HBase
     – Definition, Functionality
2. What is MongoDB
     – Definition, Functionality
3. What is Cassandra
     – Definition, Functionality
4. What are the Similarities between HBase and MongoDB and Cassandra
     – Outline of Common Features
5. What is the Difference between HBase and MongoDB and Cassandra
     – Comparison of Key Differences

Key Terms

HBase, MongoDB, Cassandra

What is HBase

HBase, built on top of the Hadoop file system, is a distributed column-oriented database file system. It is an open source project. The purpose of designing HBase is to get random access to a huge amount of structured data quickly. It is on top of the Hadoop file system and provides read and write access.

Furthermore, HBase is column oriented. The rows are used to sort the tables. A table in HBase is a collection of rows. A row is a collection of column families while a column family is a set of columns. A column is a set of key-value pairs. Hence, this is the storage mechanism in HBase.

In addition, HBase provides a number of features. It is linearly scalable and provides automatic failure support. It provides data replication across clusters. Furthermore, it integrates with Hadoop.  Moreover, the user can use HBase to perform random read, write operations to access big data and to host large tables on commodity hardware.

What is MongoDB

MongoDB is a cross-platform, documents oriented database. It stores data in the form of a JSON style document.  In MongoDB, A document is a set of key-value pairs whereas a collection is a set of documents. It is similar to an RDBMS table. Also, documents within the collection have various fields.

In MongoDB, each collection contains multiple documents. The number of fields, content and size of the document can vary from one document to another. Therefore, it is schema-less. There are no complex joins like in relational databases. Documents based query language helps to execute dynamic queries on the database. One important factor when working with relational databases is that it is necessary to convert or map the application objects to database objects to store them in the database. But MongoDB does not require that conversion. Furthermore, it uses internal memory to store working sets. Therefore, it has faster data accessing capabilities.

What is Cassandra

Cassandra is an open source, distributed, decentralized database for big data. It provides highly available services with no single point of failure. Organizations such as Cisco, Facebook, Twitter, and, Netflix use Cassandra.

There are multiple advantages of using Cassandra. It is possible to add more hardware to support more customers and data. Therefore, it provides scalability. Moreover, it is fault tolerant and available continuously for business-critical applications. It can also perform write operations of terabytes of data faster. As Cassandra supports big data, it possible to store structured, semi-structured and unstructured data. Furthermore, the user can distribute data across multiple data centers.

Similarities between HBase and MongoDB and Cassandra.

• HBase, MongoDB and Cassandra are schema free.
• All use the same partitioning method.
• They are reliable and provide high performance.
• Moreover, they support concurrency.

Difference Between HBase and MongoDB and Cassandra

Definition

HBase is an open source, non-relational, distributed database modelled after Google’s Bigtable while MongoDB is a free and open source cross-platform, document-oriented database system. Meanwhile, Cassandra is an open source, distributed and decentralized database for managing a large amount of data. This is the basic difference between HBase and MongoDB and Cassandra.

Database Type

Another difference between HBase and MongoDB and Cassandra is that the HBase and Cassandra are column-oriented whereas the MongoDB is document oriented.

Language

HBase is written in Java while MongoDB is written in C, C++ and JavaScript and Cassandra is written in Java. This is a major difference between HBase and MongoDB and Cassandra.

Developer

Apache Software Foundation developed HBase and Cassandra while MongoDB Inc developed MongoDB. 

Triggers

One more difference between HBase and MongoDB and Cassandra is that HBase and Cassandra have triggers, but MongoDB does not have triggers. 

Secondary Indexes

Also, HBase has no secondary indexes while MongoDB has secondary indexes and Cassandra has restricted secondary indexes.

Replication Method

Moreover, HBase and Cassandra use a selectable replication factor while MongoDB uses a master-slave replication factor. 

Conclusion

HBase, MongoDB and Cassandra are three NoSQL or non-relational database systems. HBase and Cassandra are column-oriented databases whereas MongoDB is a document-oriented database. That is the difference between HBase and MongoDB and Cassandra. They are used for various applications such as Big Data, Content Management, mobile and social infrastructure and data hubs.

Image Courtesy:

1. “MongoDB-Logo-5c3a7405a85675366beb3a5ec4c032348c390b3f142f5e6dddf1d78e2df5cb5c” By Alexander Sosluev – Own work (CC BY-SA 4.0) via Commons Wikimedia
2. “Cassandra logo” By Apache Software Foundation (Apache License 2.0) via Commons Wikimedia