DBMS > AlaSQL vs. MariaDB vs. MaxDB vs. Neo4j vs. TerminusDB

System Properties Comparison AlaSQL vs. MariaDB vs. MaxDB vs. Neo4j vs. TerminusDB

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

JavaScript DBMS library

MySQL application compatible open source RDBMS, enhanced with high availability, security, interoperability and performance capabilities. MariaDB ColumnStore provides a column-oriented storage engine and MariaDB Xpand supports distributed SQL.

A robust and reliable RDBMS optimized to run all major SAP solutions

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

Scalable Graph Database platform making enterprise data available by exploiting inferred entities and relationships

Primary database model

Document store
Relational DBMS

Relational DBMS

Graph DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
Graph DBMS

with OQGraph storage engine
Spatial DBMS

Document store
RDF store

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	93.21
Rank	#13	Overall
	#9	Relational DBMS

Score	2.32
Rank	#112	Overall
	#55	Relational DBMS

Score	44.46
Rank	#23	Overall
	#1	Graph DBMS

Score	0.17
Rank	#325	Overall
	#29	Graph DBMS

Website

alasql.org

mariadb.com

Site of MariaDB Corporation
mariadb.org

Site of MariaDB Foundation

maxdb.sap.com

neo4j.com

terminusdb.com

Technical documentation

github.com/AlaSQL/alasql

mariadb.com/kb/en/library

maxdb.sap.com/documentation

neo4j.com/docs

terminusdb.github.io/terminusdb/#

Developer

Andrey Gershun & Mathias R. Wulff

MariaDB Corporation Ab (MariaDB Enterprise),
MariaDB Foundation (community MariaDB Server)

The lead developer Monty Widenius is the original author of MySQL

SAP, acquired from Software AG (Adabas-D) in 1997

Neo4j, Inc.

DataChemist Ltd.

Initial release

2014

2009

Fork of MySQL, which was first released in 1995

1984

2007

2018

Current release

11.3.2, February 2024

7.9.10.12, February 2024

5.19, April 2024

11.0.0, January 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

MIT-License

Open Source

GPL version 2, commercial enterprise subscription available

commercial

Limited community edition free

Open Source

GPL version3, commercial licenses available

Open Source

GPL V3

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 and C++

C++

Java, Scala

Prolog, Rust

Server operating systems

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

FreeBSD
Linux
Solaris
Windows

ColumnStore storage engine not available on Windows

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
Solaris
Windows

Linux

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

Linux

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

Dynamic columns are supported

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

SQL

Support of SQL

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

yes

with proprietary extensions

yes

SQL-like query language (WOQL)

APIs and other access methods

JavaScript API

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary native API

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
WebDAV

Bolt protocol
Cypher query language
Java API
Neo4j-OGM

Object Graph Mapper
RESTful HTTP API
Spring Data Neo4j
TinkerPop 3

OWL
RESTful HTTP API
WOQL (Web Object Query Language)

Supported programming languages

JavaScript

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

.Net
C#
Java
Perl
PHP
Python

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

JavaScript
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

PL/SQL compatibility added with version 10.3

yes

User defined Procedures and Functions

yes

Triggers

yes

via event handler

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

several options for horizontal partitioning and Sharding

none

yes using Neo4j Fabric

Graph Partitioning

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

none

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

Source-replica replication

Causal Clustering using Raft protocol

available in in Enterprise Version only

Journaling Streams

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

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

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

by using IndexedDB, SQL.JS or proprietary FileStorage

yes

not for in-memory storage engine

yes

in-memory journaling

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

with MEMORY storage engine

User concepts

Access control

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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

Role-based access control

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

MariaDB is the most powerful open source relational database – modern SQL and JSON...
» more

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

Competitive advantages

MariaDB Servers have many features unavailable in other open source relational databases....
» more

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

Typical application scenarios

Web, SaaS and Cloud operational applications that require high availability, scalability...
» more

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

Key customers

Deutsche Bank, DBS Bank, Nasdaq, Red Hat, ServiceNow, Verizon and Walgreens Featured...
» more

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

Market metrics

MariaDB is the default database in the LAMP stack supplied by Red Hat and SUSE Linux,...
» more

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

Licensing and pricing models

MariaDB plc subscriptions cover our free, open source database, Community Server,...
» more

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

News

This Week in Neo4j: GraphRAG, Testcontainers, Metadata Management, App Dev and more
11 May 2024

Creating the GQL Database Language Standard
7 May 2024

This Week in Neo4j: GraphRAG, Knowledge Graphs, Open Source AI, GraphQL and more
4 May 2024

This Week in Neo4j: Nodes 2024, Data Modelling, Events, Knowledge Graphs and more
27 April 2024

GQL is Here: Your Cypher Queries in a GQL World
26 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.