Difference between Cassandra and MySQL

When it comes to choosing a database management system, the choice often boils down to the specific requirements of your application. Cassandra and MySQL are two popular but fundamentally different database systems.

In this article article, We will learn about Difference between Cassandra and MySQL in detail by understanding various aspects in detail.

What is Cassandra?

• Apache Cassandra is a highly scalable, distributed NoSQL database system designed to manage large amounts of data across many servers with no single point of failure.
  
• It is ideal for handling high-velocity and large-scale data, providing high availability, fault tolerance and horizontal scalability.
  
• Cassandra is often used in applications that require real-time data analysis, IoT, and handling large datasets in a distributed environment, which has a peer-to-peer architecture and support for flexible schemas.

What is MySQL?

• MySQL is an open-source relational database management system (RDBMS) that utilizes Structured Query Language (SQL) for managing and querying databases.
  
• It is widely used for web applications and enterprise-level solutions due to its performance, reliability, and ease of use.
  
• MySQL is known for its scalability, supporting large-scale databases and multiple users simultaneously and is often deployed in conjunction with web servers such as Apache in a LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP).

Difference Between Cassandra and MySQL

Here's the tabular format for the differences between Cassandra and MySQL:

When to Use Cassandra

1. Scalability and Distributed Architecture

• Cassandra is designed for large-scale, distributed systems that need to handle massive amounts of data across multiple nodes and geographic locations.
  
• It excels in environments that require horizontal scaling (adding more machines to distribute the load).

2. High Write Throughput

• If your application demands high-speed writes and handles large volumes of data, Cassandra is ideal.
  
• It is optimized for write-heavy operations and making it suitable for logging systems, IoT applications and real-time analytics.

3. Fault Tolerance and Availability

• Cassandra is built for high availability and fault tolerance.
  
• It ensures no single point of failure, meaning your application can continue running smoothly even if some nodes go down.

When to Use MySQL

1. Structured Data with Relationships

• MySQL is a relational database that is ideal for applications that require structured data and complex relationships between entities.
  
• If you need to enforce referential integrity using foreign keys or perform complex queries involving multiple tables with JOINs, MySQL is the better choice.

2. ACID Compliance

• MySQL provides full ACID properties (Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability), which ensures reliable and consistent transactions.
  
• This makes MySQL a strong candidate for systems requiring strict transactional integrity, such as financial applications, e-commerce systems, and order processing.

3. Immediate Consistency

• If your application needs strong immediate consistency (all reads should reflect the latest writes).
  
• MySQL is better suited, as it enforces immediate consistency by design.

Conclusion

Choosing between Cassandra and MySQL depends largely on the architecture, scalability, and consistency requirements of your application. Cassandra is the preferred option for distributed, high-volume, write-heavy applications with a need for fault tolerance and high availability. MySQL, on the other hand, is better suited for applications that need structured data management, strong transactional integrity, and immediate consistency.