[ergo98]

>These two projects solve totally different problems

No they don't. This is the wavy-hands NoSQL defensive shield that reeks of insincerity. If you show Cassandra or Redis or some other solution replacing a MySQL install, well that's just awesome, but don't dare compare if it doesn't come out the winner.

A lot of people have workloads that could work in VoltDB, a classic RDBMS, or Cassandra, equally. There are workloads that only fit in specific silos, but they are less universal than you imply.

>So why benchmark against Cassandra? It's got a lot of buzz around it, of course. What a better way to shove your name into the "NoSQL" ring. Blech.

Okay this is just silly. Cassandra is the big name in the "next gen database" world -- of COURSE any new entrant is going to compare against it.

[tlack]

That's like benchmarking Berkeley DB vs. MySQL. They are on totally different levels of complexity. You can't compare memory-only db performance against a disk based db, period.

[ergo98]

>You can't compare memory-only db performance against a disk based db, period.

But...you can. What do you mean you can't compare? Clearly you can, however mortified you might be at that prospect.

A reasonable motorcycle can go from 0-60 in about 4 seconds. A reasonable car can do it in about 9 seconds. But you need to carry two passengers so the car is your only option, and such a comparison doesn't matter to you, but to a lot of people it's interesting if ultimately they just want to get from A to B as quickly as possibly. Then again if you want to transport goods maybe you need a truck, or a train.

This is so silly. Wait -- hand wavy -- that's right, nothing can be compared to Cassandra but pure love itself.

[mileszs]

I don't think it's hand-wavy. I think you're upset about something else related to Cassandra that perhaps you read recently -- not tlack's comment. Suggesting it would make more sense to compare an in-memory data store to another in-memory data store would be a more interesting comparison seems a perfectly valid suggestion.

"This is so silly. Wait -- hand wavy -- that's right, nothing can be compared to Cassandra but pure love itself."

C'mon, man. That doesn't further discussion. That sort of statement serves only to incite anger.

[ergo98]

> I think you're upset about something else related to Cassandra that perhaps you read recently

Huh? No, I love Cassandra. She's a beaut.

tlack didn't say "it would make more sense to compare an in-memory data store to another in-memory data store". They said "You can't compare memory-only db performance against a disk based db, period.". There's a pretty profound difference between those two statements.

[tlack]

Of course you can compare them. You can compare the speed of Oracle on a huge RAC cluster vs. text files on an Amiga 500 floppy drive. But no one would, because it's stupid and worthless. I guess that's what I meant: this is a stupid and worthless article.

[jhugg]

I didn't mean to claim anyone will be struggling to decide between VoltDB and Cassandra and then choose VoltDB based on the benchmarks we did. I think that's as ridiculous as you do.

Our point, which perhaps I made poorly, was twofold. 1. You can be both fast and SQL. Nothing about the language itself was ever the bottleneck. 2. VoltDB isn't just for big complicated transactions. You can use SQL for KV-type workloads and perform.

There's 100 other reasons to pick one data layer over another, and the best tool will be different for different problems.

[ntoshev]

Why not compare it to Redis instead? They are both in-memory snapshotting stores, sure Redis does less but it is still a closer solution. But, Redis would probably be faster.

[aweisberg]

Redis does not support partitioning so it is even more apples to oranges then VoltDB vs. Cassandra. Both VoltDB and Cassandra rely on adding nodes to scale.