DBMS > AlaSQL vs. Amazon DynamoDB vs. Neo4j vs. VoltDB vs. Weaviate

System Properties Comparison AlaSQL vs. Amazon DynamoDB vs. Neo4j vs. VoltDB vs. Weaviate

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

JavaScript DBMS library

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

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

Distributed In-Memory NewSQL RDBMS

Used for OLTP applications with a high frequency of relatively simple transactions, that can hold all their data in memory

An AI-native realtime vector database engine that integrates scalable machine learning models.

Primary database model

Document store
Relational DBMS

Document store
Key-value store

Graph DBMS

Relational DBMS

Vector DBMS

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

Score	0.46
Rank	#260	Overall
	#40	Document stores
	#121	Relational DBMS

Score	74.07
Rank	#17	Overall
	#3	Document stores
	#2	Key-value stores

Score	44.46
Rank	#23	Overall
	#1	Graph DBMS

Score	1.44
Rank	#158	Overall
	#73	Relational DBMS

Score	1.73
Rank	#143	Overall
	#5	Vector DBMS

Website

alasql.org

aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

neo4j.com

www.voltdb.com

github.com/weaviate/weaviate
weaviate.io

Technical documentation

github.com/AlaSQL/alasql

docs.aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

neo4j.com/docs

docs.voltdb.com

weaviate.io/developers/weaviate

Developer

Andrey Gershun & Mathias R. Wulff

Amazon

Neo4j, Inc.

VoltDB Inc.

Weaviate B.V.

Initial release

2014

2012

2007

2010

2019

Current release

5.19, April 2024

11.3, April 2022

1.19, May 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

MIT-License

commercial

free tier for a limited amount of database operations

Open Source

GPL version3, commercial licenses available

Open Source

AGPL for Community Edition, commercial license for Enterprise, AWS, and Pro Editions

Open Source

commercial license available with Weaviate Enterprise

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

Java, C++

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

Linux
OS X

for development

Data scheme

schema-free

schema-free and schema-optional

yes

yes, maps to GraphQL interface

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

string, int, float, geo point, date, cross reference, fuzzy references

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

pluggable indexing subsystem, by default Apache Lucene

yes

all data objects are indexed in a semantic vector space (the Contextionary), all primitive fields are indexed

SQL

Support of SQL

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

yes

only a subset of SQL 99

GraphQL is used as query language

APIs and other access methods

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

Java API
JDBC
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

GraphQL query language
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Supported programming languages

JavaScript

.Net
ColdFusion
Erlang
Groovy
Java
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

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

C#
C++
Erlang

not officially supported
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
PHP
Python

JavaScript / TypeScript
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

User defined Procedures and Functions

Java

Triggers

yes

by integration with AWS Lambda

yes

via event handler

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Sharding

yes using Neo4j Fabric

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

none

yes

Causal Clustering using Raft protocol

available in in Enterprise Version only

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

yes

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

may be implemented via Amazon Elastic MapReduce (Amazon EMR)

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

none

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

can be specified for read operations

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

Eventual Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Relationships in graphs

FOREIGN KEY constraints are not supported

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

Transactions are executed single-threaded within stored procedures

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Data access is serialized by the server

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

by using IndexedDB, SQL.JS or proprietary FileStorage

yes

Snapshots and command logging

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)

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

Users and roles with access to stored procedures

API Keys
OpenID Connect Discovery

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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Weaviate is an open source vector database that is robust, scalable, cloud-native,...
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Competitive advantages

Neo4j is the market leader, graph database category creator, and the most widely...
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Flexible deployment - Free, open source or fully-managed cloud vector database service...
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Typical application scenarios

Real-Time Recommendations Master Data Management Identity and Access Management Network...
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As a database supporting the development of generative AI and semantic search applications...
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Key customers

Over 800 commercial customers and over 4300 startups use Neo4j. Flagship customers...
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All companies that have data.
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Market metrics

Neo4j boasts the world's largest graph database ecosystem with more than 140 million...
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As of mid 2023: Over 2 million open source downloads 3500+ Weaviate Slack community...
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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...
» more

Weaviate is open-source, and free to use. Weaviate is also available as a fully managed...
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News

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16 May 2024

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New Security Feature in Neo4j Aura: Customer Managed Keys
15 May 2024

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13 May 2024

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and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.