DBMS > AlaSQL vs. Couchbase vs. jBASE vs. Neo4j vs. QuestDB

System Properties Comparison AlaSQL vs. Couchbase vs. jBASE vs. Neo4j vs. QuestDB

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

JavaScript DBMS library

A distributed document store with integrated cache, a powerful search engine, in-built operational and analytical capabilities, and an embedded mobile database

A robust multi-value DBMS comprising development tools and middleware

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

A high performance open source SQL database for time series data

Primary database model

Document store
Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Key-value store

originating from the former Membase product and supporting the Memcached protocol
Spatial DBMS

using the Geocouch extension
Search engine
Time Series DBMS
Vector DBMS

Relational 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	16.59
Rank	#36	Overall
	#5	Document stores

Score	1.49
Rank	#156	Overall
	#3	Multivalue DBMS

Score	44.89
Rank	#21	Overall
	#1	Graph DBMS

Score	2.70
Rank	#105	Overall
	#8	Time Series DBMS

Website

alasql.org

www.couchbase.com

www.rocketsoftware.com/products/rocket-multivalue-application-development-platform/rocket-jbase

neo4j.com

questdb.io

Technical documentation

github.com/AlaSQL/alasql

docs.couchbase.com

docs.rocketsoftware.com/bundle?labelkey=jbase_5.9

neo4j.com/docs

questdb.io/docs

Developer

Andrey Gershun & Mathias R. Wulff

Couchbase, Inc.

Rocket Software (formerly Zumasys)

Neo4j, Inc.

QuestDB Technology Inc

Initial release

2014

2011

1991

2007

2014

Current release

Server: 7.2, June 2023; Mobile: 3.1, March 2022; Couchbase Capella (DBaaS), June 2023

5.7

5.20, May 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

MIT-License

Open Source

Business Source License (BSL 1.1); Commercial licenses also available

commercial

Open Source

GPL version3, commercial licenses available

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

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

C, C++, Go and Erlang

Java, Scala

Java (Zero-GC), C++, Rust

Server operating systems

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

Linux
OS X
Windows

AIX
Linux
Windows

Linux

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

Linux
macOS
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

schema-free and schema-optional

yes

schema-free via InfluxDB Line Protocol

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

optional

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

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++, extends ANSI SQL to JSON for operational, transactional, and analytic use cases

Embedded SQL for jBASE in BASIC

SQL with time-series extensions

APIs and other access methods

JavaScript API

CLI Client
HTTP REST
Kafka Connector
Native language bindings for CRUD, Query, Search and Analytics APIs
Spark Connector
Spring Data

JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary protocol
RESTful HTTP API
SOAP-based API

Bolt protocol
Cypher query language
Java API
Neo4j-OGM

Object Graph Mapper
RESTful HTTP API
Spring Data Neo4j
TinkerPop 3

HTTP REST
InfluxDB Line Protocol (TCP/UDP)
JDBC
PostgreSQL wire protocol

Supported programming languages

JavaScript

.Net
C
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Kotlin
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

.Net
Basic
Jabbascript
Java

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

PostgreSQL driver
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python
Rust

over HTTP

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

Functions and timers in JavaScript and UDFs in Java, Python, SQL++

yes

User defined Procedures and Functions

Triggers

yes

via the TAP protocol

yes

via event handler

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Automatic Sharding

Sharding

yes using Neo4j Fabric

horizontal partitioning (by timestamps)

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

none

Multi-source replication

including cross data center replication
Source-replica replication

yes

Causal Clustering using Raft protocol

available in in Enterprise Version only

Source-replica replication with eventual consistency

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

none

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

selectable on a per-operation basis

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

yes

only for local storage and DOM-storage

ACID

ACID for single-table writes

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

Ephemeral buckets

yes

through memory mapped files

User concepts

Access control

User and Administrator separation with password-based and LDAP integrated Authentication. Role-base access control.

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...
» more

Relational model with native time series support Column-based storage and time partitioned...
» more

Competitive advantages

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

High ingestion throughput: peak of 4M rows/sec (TSBS Benchmark) Code optimizations...
» more

Typical application scenarios

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

Financial tick data Industrial IoT Application Metrics Monitoring
» more

Key customers

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

Banks & Hedge funds, Yahoo, OKX, Airbus, Aquis Exchange, Net App, Cloudera, Airtel,...
» more

Market metrics

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

Licensing and pricing models

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

Open source Apache 2.0 QuestDB Enterprise QuestDB Cloud
» more

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