DBMS > 4D vs. Cassandra vs. Google Cloud Firestore vs. Neo4j vs. VelocityDB

System Properties Comparison 4D vs. Cassandra vs. Google Cloud Firestore vs. Neo4j vs. VelocityDB

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Application development environment with integrated database management system

Wide-column store based on ideas of BigTable and DynamoDB

Optimized for write access

Cloud Firestore is an auto-scaling document database for storing, syncing, and querying data for mobile and web apps. It offers seamless integration with other Firebase and Google Cloud Platform products.

Scalable, ACID-compliant graph database designed with a high-performance distributed cluster architecture, available in self-hosted and cloud offerings

A .NET Object Database that can be embedded/distributed and extended to a graph data model (VelocityGraph)

Primary database model

Graph DBMS
Object oriented DBMS

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

DB-Engines Ranking measures the popularity of database management systems
Trend Chart

Score	2.68
Rank	#110	Overall
	#54	Relational DBMS

Score	103.86
Rank	#12	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	8.96
Rank	#48	Overall
	#8	Document stores

Score	44.47
Rank	#23	Overall
	#1	Graph DBMS

Score	0.11
Rank	#347	Overall
	#35	Graph DBMS
	#15	Object oriented DBMS

Website

www.4d.com

cassandra.apache.org

firebase.google.com/products/firestore

neo4j.com

velocitydb.com

Technical documentation

developer.4d.com

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

firebase.google.com/docs/firestore

neo4j.com/docs

velocitydb.com/UserGuide

Developer

4D, Inc

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Google

Neo4j, Inc.

VelocityDB Inc

Initial release

1984

2008

2017

2007

2011

Current release

v20, April 2023

4.1.3, July 2023

5.18.1, March 2024

7.x

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Apache version 2

commercial

Open Source

GPL version3, commercial licenses available

commercial

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

Providers of DBaaS offerings, please contact us to be listed.

Astra DB: Multi-cloud DBaaS built on Apache Cassandra.

Neo4j Aura: Neo4j’s fully managed cloud service: The zero-admin, always-on graph database for cloud developers.

Implementation language

Java

Java, Scala

Server operating systems

OS X
Windows

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

hosted

Linux

Can also be used server-less as embedded Java database.
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Any that supports .NET

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

schema-free and schema-optional

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

XML support

Some form of processing data in XML format, e.g. support for XML data structures, and/or support for XPath, XQuery or XSLT.

yes

Secondary indexes

yes

restricted

only equality queries, not always the best performing solution

yes

pluggable indexing subsystem, by default Apache Lucene

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

close to SQL 92

SQL-like SELECT, DML and DDL statements (CQL)

APIs and other access methods

ODBC
RESTful HTTP API

by using 4D Mobile
SOAP webservices

Proprietary protocol

CQL (Cassandra Query Language, an SQL-like language)
Thrift

Android
gRPC (using protocol buffers) API
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

Bolt protocol
Cypher query language
Java API
Neo4j-OGM

Object Graph Mapper
RESTful HTTP API
Spring Data Neo4j
TinkerPop 3

.Net

Supported programming languages

4D proprietary IDE
PHP

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

Go
Java
JavaScript
JavaScript (Node.js)
Objective-C
Python

.Net
Clojure
Elixir
Go
Groovy
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

.Net

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

yes, Firebase Rules & Cloud Functions

yes

User defined Procedures and Functions

Triggers

yes

yes, with Cloud Functions

yes

via event handler

Callbacks are triggered when data changes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

Sharding

yes using Neo4j Fabric

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

Multi-source replication

Causal Clustering using Raft protocol

available in in Enterprise Version only

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

Using Cloud Dataflow

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

can be individually decided for each write operation

Immediate Consistency

Causal and Eventual Consistency configurable in Causal Cluster setup
Immediate Consistency in stand-alone mode

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Relationships in graphs

Transaction concepts

Support to ensure data integrity after non-atomic manipulations of data

ACID

Atomicity and isolation are supported for single operations

yes

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

In-memory capabilities

Is there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.

yes

User concepts

Access control

Users and groups

Access rights for users can be defined per object

Access rights for users, groups and roles based on Google Cloud Identity and Access Management. Security Rules for 3rd party authentication using Firebase Auth.

Users, roles and permissions. Pluggable authentication with supported standards (LDAP, Active Directory, Kerberos)

Based on Windows Authentication

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Apache Cassandra is the leading NoSQL, distributed database management system, well...
» more

Neo4j delivers graph technology that has been battle tested for performance and scale...
» more

Competitive advantages

No single point of failure ensures 100% availability . Operational simplicity for...
» more

Neo4j is the market leader, graph database category creator, and the most widely...
» more

Typical application scenarios

Internet of Things (IOT), fraud detection applications, recommendation engines, product...
» more

Real-Time Recommendations Master Data Management Identity and Access Management Network...
» more

Key customers

Apple, Netflix, Uber, ING,, Intuit,Fidelity, NY Times, Outbrain, BazaarVoice, Best...
» more

Over 800 commercial customers and over 4300 startups use Neo4j. Flagship customers...
» more

Market metrics

Cassandra is used by 40% of the Fortune 100.
» more

Neo4j boasts the world's largest graph database ecosystem with more than 140 million...
» more

Licensing and pricing models

Apache licenseÂ Pricing for commercial distributions provided by DataStax and available...
» more

GPL v3 license that can be used all the places where you might use MySQL. Neo4j Commercial...
» more

News

How Winweb Built its AI Assistant with DataStax Astra DB and LangChain
17 April 2024

Vercel + Astra DB: Get Data into Your GenAI Apps Fast
16 April 2024

Simplifying Agent Development with Astra DB Connector for Vertex AI Search
11 April 2024

Making Astra DB easier for MongoDB developers
10 April 2024

Empowering Enterprise GenAI: Announcing Luna for RAGStack
10 April 2024

Announcing NODES 2024: Submit Your Talk
17 April 2024

ISO GQL: A Defining Moment in the History of Database Innovation
17 April 2024

This Week in Neo4j: Podcast, RAG, Neo4j Guide, ERP and more
13 April 2024

Neo4j Brings GraphRAG Capabilities for GenAI to Google Cloud
9 April 2024

Neo4j Is Now SOC2 Type 2 Compliant
8 April 2024

We invite representatives of system vendors to contact us for updating and extending the system information,
and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.