Business Blog Advice
MongoDB vs Cassandra — which one is better for your business?
In order to handle your data, and ensure you’ve got the right access — you need to source and use the right tools.
Today, let’s look at a couple of different options for databases and storage — specifically MongoDB and Cassandra.
We’ll take a quick look at what MongoDB and Cassandra are, the pros and cons of each, how they compare, and what you need to be looking for in order to make the right choice for your data ingestion, ETL, data pipelines, architectural patterns, and all those data engineering and data science bits that make up your business.
What are these platforms?
To get a better understanding of which tool is better for your business, let’s have a quick look at what each one does:
MongoDB:
A leading NoSQL document-based database, MongoDB is a source-available cross-platform database program. The architecture is popular with developers for its scalable applications and the evolution of data schemas, as well as being easy to store structured or unstructured data. As Ardent point out, MongoDB is also a popular choice for back-end development.
Cassandra:
An open-source NoSQL distributed database, Cassandra manages large amount on its decentralised and scalable storage system of multiple commodity servers. It’s designed to handle large data volume, and provide high availability which isn’t in a position to be compromised by a single point of failure.
How do MongoDB and Cassandra compare?
So now we’ve looked at what the platforms do (in general), how do they compare to each other?
Pros of MongoDB:
- High speed and availability.
- Simple architecture, set-up, and user environment.
- Flexibility and scalability.
Pros of Cassandra:
- Allows for scalable databases using off-the-shelf solutions.
- Cost effective and low maintenance platform.
- High performance with continuous data availability.
Cons of MongoDB:
- Limited data size and nesting.
- High memory usage.
- Lack of flexibility in querying.
Cons of Cassandra:
- Doesn’t support ACID and relational data properties.
- Some issues with latency due to request levels.
- Data modelled around queries (not structure) can lead to multiple repeat data entries.
Which platform is better for what tasks?
As a general purpose document database, MongoDB is largely considered to be a popular choice, whereas Cassandra is often looked at for its wide-column NoSQL store.
Cassandra is seen to have a more structured data storage system, and is suitable for fixed format data — but if you’re working with dynamic data, or data that doesn’t have a consistent structure — then MongoDB is often found to work better.
In order to understand the better platform for your business, you need to identify what types of data you’re working with, how you want your architecture to be structured, and what your team are already working with, and whether a database or data warehouse is going to provide you with what you need.
The technology you choose for your company is going to play an enormous role in how you grow and develop — so it’s absolutely essential that you get it right.
Taking the time to carefully research different platforms, determine exactly what you’re working with (now, and what you’re planning for the future), and keeping a careful eye on incoming technologies and upgrades are all actions that will help you do more with your resources, and improve your business growth and success.
