A brief look into popularity of MongoDB, Redis and Apache Cassandra

This is just a short look at the popularity of MongoDB, Redis and Apache Cassandra.

Recently I was a bit surprised by the Google Trend image posted at KDnuggers in June 2016, which shows that Apache Cassandra is ranking a lot higher than my experience would suggest.

This is the image I am referring to:

I’ve run the same trends comparison, making sure to exclude keywords from unrelated fields and look at the past five years only (the more relevant time frame) and that paints a bit more accurate image I think. See Figure 1  below, created as of today, 30th of January.

Figure 1

MongoDB is still the most popular database, but it seems that interest in Redis is growing more in popularity, and already surpassed the popularity of Apache Cassandra.

Of course, this is just semantics, but I find that my diagram is more representative and more in the consensus of the general interest.

It’s fascinating that these two databases (MongoDB and Redis) that are entirely different regarding the data storage type and approach, are making the TOP 2 in the popularity list. Redis (key-value pair model, with typically in-memory storage) is very fast, but its API is very atomic, whereas MongoDB (document data store with disk memory mapped files) is more resource hungry, but its API is simple and easy to use.

Redis (key-value pair model, with typically in-memory storage) is very fast, but its API is very atomic, whereas MongoDB (document data store with disk memory mapped files) is more resource hungry, but its API is simple and easy to use.

I think it speaks to a fact, that there are two primary use cases when it comes to NoSQL databases. One where data need to be stored in the variety of specialized data structures, customized for each type of object for efficiency, which makes a good case for using Redis. And the other use case, where MongoDB is easier to work with due to JSON structure that provides more consistency, albeit not as fast.

However, when we look at the newest popularity trends, it seems that the speed and efficiency of Redis is a quality people look for, even though it means that there’ll be an extra work when dealing with the variety of structures in which the data might be stored.

The common conclusion to these two is, that MongoDB offers simplicity, much shorter learning curve for developers with traditional DB and SQL experience, whereas Redis’s non-traditional approach requires more effort to learn, but greater speed and overall flexibility.

 

References

What are the differences between MongoDB and Redis? (2017) Available at: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6445899/what-are-the-differences-between-mongodb-and-redis (Accessed: 30 January 2017).

Google trends (2017) Available at: https://www.google.ca/trends/explore?cat=5&q=%2Fm%2F05z_r2n,%2Fm%2F04f32m3,%2Fm%2F09gnj_f,%2Fm%2F03wfh72,neo4j (Accessed: 30 January 2017).