DBMS > AlaSQL vs. Amazon DynamoDB vs. Google Cloud Datastore vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Neo4j

System Properties Comparison AlaSQL vs. Amazon DynamoDB vs. Google Cloud Datastore vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Neo4j

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

JavaScript DBMS library

Hosted, scalable database service by Amazon with the data stored in Amazons cloud

Automatically scaling NoSQL Database as a Service (DBaaS) on the Google Cloud Platform

Globally distributed, horizontally scalable, multi-model database service

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

Primary database model

Document store
Relational DBMS

Document store
Key-value store

Document store

Document store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store
Wide column store

Graph DBMS

Secondary database models

Spatial DBMS

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

Score	0.51
Rank	#256	Overall
	#40	Document stores
	#118	Relational DBMS

Score	74.45
Rank	#17	Overall
	#3	Document stores
	#2	Key-value stores

Score	4.36
Rank	#72	Overall
	#12	Document stores

Score	27.71
Rank	#27	Overall
	#4	Document stores
	#2	Graph DBMS
	#3	Key-value stores
	#3	Wide column stores

Score	44.89
Rank	#21	Overall
	#1	Graph DBMS

Website

alasql.org

aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

cloud.google.com/datastore

azure.microsoft.com/services/cosmos-db

neo4j.com

Technical documentation

github.com/AlaSQL/alasql

docs.aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

cloud.google.com/datastore/docs

learn.microsoft.com/azure/cosmos-db

neo4j.com/docs

Developer

Andrey Gershun & Mathias R. Wulff

Amazon

Google

Microsoft

Neo4j, Inc.

Initial release

2014

2012

2008

2014

2007

Current release

5.20, May 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

MIT-License

commercial

free tier for a limited amount of database operations

commercial

Open Source

GPL version3, commercial licenses available

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.

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

Implementation language

JavaScript

Java, Scala

Server operating systems

server-less, requires a JavaScript environment (browser, Node.js)

hosted

Linux

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

Data scheme

schema-free

schema-free and schema-optional

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

yes, details here

yes

JSON types

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.

Secondary indexes

yes

All properties auto-indexed by default

yes

pluggable indexing subsystem, by default Apache Lucene

SQL

Support of SQL

Close to SQL99, but no user access control, stored procedures and host language bindings.

SQL-like query language (GQL)

SQL-like query language

APIs and other access methods

JavaScript API

RESTful HTTP API

gRPC (using protocol buffers) API
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

DocumentDB API
Graph API (Gremlin)
MongoDB API
RESTful HTTP API
Table API

Bolt protocol
Cypher query language
Java API
Neo4j-OGM

Object Graph Mapper
RESTful HTTP API
Spring Data Neo4j
TinkerPop 3

Supported programming languages

JavaScript

.Net
ColdFusion
Erlang
Groovy
Java
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

.Net
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby

.Net
C#
Java
JavaScript
JavaScript (Node.js)
MongoDB client drivers written for various programming languages
Python

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

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

using Google App Engine

JavaScript

yes

User defined Procedures and Functions

Triggers

yes

by integration with AWS Lambda

Callbacks using the Google Apps Engine

JavaScript

yes

via event handler

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

yes using Neo4j Fabric

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

none

yes

Multi-source replication using Paxos

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

Causal Clustering using Raft protocol

available in in Enterprise Version only

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

may be implemented via Amazon Elastic MapReduce (Amazon EMR)

yes

using Google Cloud Dataflow

with Hadoop integration

Integration with Hadoop/HDInsight on Azure*

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

none

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

can be specified for read operations

Immediate Consistency or Eventual Consistency depending on type of query and configuration

Strong Consistency is default for entity lookups and queries within an Entity Group (but can instead be made eventually consistent). Other queries are always eventual consistent.

Bounded Staleness
Consistent Prefix
Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Consistency level configurable on request level
Session Consistency

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

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

via ReferenceProperties or Ancestor paths

yes

Relationships in graphs

Transaction concepts

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

yes

only for local storage and DOM-storage

ACID

ACID across one or more tables within a single AWS account and region

ACID

Serializable Isolation within Transactions, Read Committed outside of Transactions

Multi-item ACID transactions with snapshot isolation within a partition

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

by using IndexedDB, SQL.JS or proprietary FileStorage

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

Access rights for users and roles can be defined via the AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM)

Access rights for users, groups and roles based on Google Cloud Identity and Access Management (IAM)

Access rights can be defined down to the item level

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

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Neo4j delivers graph technology that has been battle tested for performance and scale...
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Competitive advantages

Neo4j is the market leader, graph database category creator, and the most widely...
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Typical application scenarios

Real-Time Recommendations Master Data Management Identity and Access Management Network...
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Key customers

Over 800 commercial customers and over 4300 startups use Neo4j. Flagship customers...
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Market metrics

Neo4j boasts the world's largest graph database ecosystem with more than 140 million...
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Licensing and pricing models

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