Astra DB vs. RavenDB

We use Astra DB to improve our management systems. Storing data has become hassle-free and quite simple. When launching a Cassandra-based cloud application, Astra DB is exactly what you need. In addition to the standard training programs and videos, the extended support and training require significant additional effort to activate and cover which I feel is a bit more tedious task.

Incentivized

RavenDB is very well suited for NoSQL beginners to start easily setting up and using a NoSQL database. Also to set up a high performance and high availability cluster is possible without reading tons of documentation. Very straightforward assistant! The performance is really high.

• We need to be able to process a lot of data (our biggest clients process hundreds of milions of transactions every month). However, it is not only the amount of data, it is also an unpredictable patterns with spikes occuring at different points of time - something athat Astra is great at.
• Our processing needs to be extremaly fast. Some of our clients use our enrichment in a synchronous way, meaning that any delay in processing is holding up the whole transaction lifecycle and can have a major impact on the client. Astra is very fast.
• A close collaboration with GCP makes our life very easy. All of our technology sits in Google Cloud, so having Astra in there makes it a no-brainer solution for us.

Incentivized

• Document Database - no Object-Relational Impedance Mismatch
• ACID support that is optimized for performance
• Can be easily integrated into automated tests (unit tests)
• Easily configurable via C# code
• Comes directly with RavenStudio - no SSMS or SQL Developer required
• In general low footprint when it comes to memory and disk consumption
• Useful safety nets for new developers - e.g. by default an exception is thrown when you make too many requests within a session

• Astra DB might be difficult to understand for people who are unfamiliar with Apache Cassandra. Improving the initial experience for newcomers, as well as offering better documentation and lessons, might be advantageous.
• The Astra DB ecosystem may be enhanced by expanding the ecosystem of plugins, integrations, and community-contributed solutions.

Incentivized

• Developing methods is challenging if developers are unfamiliar with the accurate simulation approach.
• It does not allow you to replicating, or authorized access without first acquiring a license.
• The lack of evidence of tracking records in the enterprise systems raises several concerns about RavenDB.

We've had an excellent experience using RavenDB. Internally we are testing the newer features in 5.0 such as time series, which will effect the con specified previously dependent on the real world performance. We foresee that BattleCrate will continue to use RavenDB as we grow.

It's a great product but suffers with counters. This isn't a deal breaker but lets down what is otherwise a good all round solution

Incentivized

Really good .NET client that is very easy to use. The management studio is excellent and puts anything that Microsoft or Oracle have to shame. Very quick to develop with once the complexity hurdle has been overcome. Initially using it can be a bit painful until you fully grasp the event sourced nature of the indexing.

Their response time is fast, in case you do not contact them during business hours, they give a very good follow-up to your case. They also facilitate video calls if necessary for debugging.

Incentivized

Had a question that was answered in minutes. Never used a NoSQL approach before, but was able to be proficient in a matter of hours. Easy to read API Documentation. 5 out 5 support in book, I have never once ran into an issue that wasn't quickly solved by either their support team or myself doing a quick search online.

RavenFS changed along the way and made us change the codes.

We also (briefly) considered building in-house. We wanted to avoid complex "Frankenstein" architectures. Combining Pinecone with another NoSQL datastore like DynamoDB would have increased complexity. A single-managed platform (Astra DB) enabled architectural simplicity and strong reliability, allowing Maester’s development team to prioritize high-value, customer-facing features

Incentivized

RavenDB is just smarter than the competitors. The mapping reduction sorting is head and shoulders above everything else I've used. Nothing really approaches comparable in terms of complexity. Because of the searching of predetermined categories, read efficiency is terrible. RavenDB is a storage system designed for the current websites and functional prototypes. It has an easy-to-use interface and enables quick replication and backup installation. Furthermore, technical assistance responds quickly and walks you through the implementation and deployment procedures.

We are well aware of the Cassandra architecture and familiar with the open source tooling that Datastax provides the industry (K8sSandra / Stargate) to scale Cassandra on Kubernetes.

Having prior knowledge of Cassandra / Kubernetes means we know that under the hood Astra is built on infinitely scalable technologies. We trust that the foundations that Astra is built on will scale so we know Astra will scale.

Incentivized

• Database growth planning is less of a concern with Astra, as it scales automatically.
• Currently, they lack fine-grained security at the table level. I suspect that will change over time.
• If your load has peaks and valleys; Astra enables only paying for Reads/Writes; thus you do not need to pay for large servers to support peaks in load.

Incentivized

• RavenDB has saved my customers a lot of money with their cloud services' tiered model. The database is able to grow with the project/company and can start out small at a low cost.
• RavenDB is free for three nodes and three CPUs, which makes it great for development scenarios. You're able to start rapidly building applications without having to worry about licensing.
• Scaling out has allowed us to use three small cloud servers when starting out and get the performance and throughput of a single larger server.