DBMS > AlaSQL vs. Firebird vs. MySQL vs. Neo4j vs. SAP SQL Anywhere

System Properties Comparison AlaSQL vs. Firebird vs. MySQL vs. Neo4j vs. SAP SQL Anywhere

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

JavaScript DBMS library

Firebird is an open source RDBMS forked from Borland's InterBase

Widely used open source RDBMS

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

RDBMS database and synchronization technologies for server, desktop, remote office, and mobile environments

Primary database model

Document store
Relational DBMS

Relational DBMS

Key/Value like access via memcached API

Graph DBMS

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
Spatial 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	20.82
Rank	#30	Overall
	#18	Relational DBMS

Score	1083.74
Rank	#2	Overall
	#2	Relational DBMS

Score	44.46
Rank	#23	Overall
	#1	Graph DBMS

Score	4.25
Rank	#79	Overall
	#43	Relational DBMS

Website

www.sap.com/products/technology-platform/sql-anywhere.html

Technical documentation

github.com/AlaSQL/alasql

www.firebirdsql.org/en/reference-manuals

dev.mysql.com/doc

neo4j.com/docs

help.sap.com/docs/SAP_SQL_Anywhere

Developer

Andrey Gershun & Mathias R. Wulff

Firebird Foundation

Oracle

since 2010, originally MySQL AB, then Sun

Neo4j, Inc.

SAP

formerly Sybase

Initial release

2014

2000

As fork of Borland's InterBase

1995

2007

1992

Current release

5.0.0, January 2024

8.3.0, January 2024

5.19, April 2024

17, July 2015

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

MIT-License

Open Source

Initial Developer's Public License

Open Source

GPL version 2. Commercial licenses with extended functionallity are available

Open Source

GPL version3, commercial licenses available

commercial

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.

Aiven for MySQL: Fully managed MySQL, deployable in the cloud of your choice, with seamless integrations and lightning-fast setup.

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

Implementation language

JavaScript

C and C++

Java, Scala

Server operating systems

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

AIX
FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
server-less

Firebird Embedded Server
Solaris
Unix
Windows

FreeBSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Linux

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

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

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

pluggable indexing subsystem, by default Apache Lucene

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

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

yes

with proprietary extensions

yes

APIs and other access methods

JavaScript API

ADO.NET
C/C++ API
JDBC

Jaybird
ODBC
OLE DB

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary native API

Bolt protocol
Cypher query language
Java API
Neo4j-OGM

Object Graph Mapper
RESTful HTTP API
Spring Data Neo4j
TinkerPop 3

ADO.NET
HTTP API
JDBC
ODBC

Supported programming languages

JavaScript

C
C#
C++
Delphi
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Lua
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

Ada
C
C#
C++
D
Delphi
Eiffel
Erlang
Haskell
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl

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

C
C#
C++
Delphi
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

PSQL

yes

proprietary syntax

yes

User defined Procedures and Functions

yes, in C/C++, Java, .Net or Perl

Triggers

yes

via event handler

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

horizontal partitioning, sharding with MySQL Cluster or MySQL Fabric

yes using Neo4j Fabric

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

none

Source-replica replication

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

Causal Clustering using Raft protocol

available in in Enterprise Version only

Source-replica replication

Database mirroring

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

none

Immediate Consistency

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

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

not for MyISAM storage engine

yes

Relationships in graphs

yes

Transaction concepts

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

yes

only for local storage and DOM-storage

ACID

not for MyISAM storage engine

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Features a multi-generational MVCC architecture, readers do not block writers

yes

table locks or row locks depending on storage engine

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

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

no user groups or roles

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

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

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Key customers

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Market metrics

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Licensing and pricing models

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