DBMS > AlaSQL vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. Neo4j vs. Quasardb vs. RavenDB

System Properties Comparison AlaSQL vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. Neo4j vs. Quasardb vs. RavenDB

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

JavaScript DBMS library

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

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

Distributed, high-performance timeseries database

Open Source Operational and Transactional Enterprise NoSQL Document Database

Primary database model

Document store
Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS
Time Series 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	824.29
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	44.46
Rank	#23	Overall
	#1	Graph DBMS

Score	0.14
Rank	#332	Overall
	#29	Time Series DBMS

Score	2.92
Rank	#101	Overall
	#18	Document stores

Website

alasql.org

www.microsoft.com/en-us/sql-server

neo4j.com

quasar.ai

ravendb.net

Technical documentation

github.com/AlaSQL/alasql

learn.microsoft.com/en-US/sql/sql-server

neo4j.com/docs

doc.quasar.ai/master

ravendb.net/docs

Developer

Andrey Gershun & Mathias R. Wulff

Microsoft

Neo4j, Inc.

quasardb

Hibernating Rhinos

Initial release

2014

1989

2007

2009

2010

Current release

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

5.19, April 2024

3.14.1, January 2024

5.4, July 2022

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

MIT-License

commercial

restricted free version is available

Open Source

GPL version3, commercial licenses available

commercial

Free community edition, Non-profit organizations and non-commercial usage are eligible for free licenses

Open Source

AGPL version 3, commercial license available

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

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

Implementation language

JavaScript

C++

Java, Scala

C++

Server operating systems

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

Linux
Windows

Linux

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

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
macOS
Raspberry Pi
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free and schema-optional

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

integer and binary

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

with tags

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

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

yes

SQL-like query language

SQL-like query language (RQL)

APIs and other access methods

JavaScript API

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
OLE DB
Tabular Data Stream (TDS)

Bolt protocol
Cypher query language
Java API
Neo4j-OGM

Object Graph Mapper
RESTful HTTP API
Spring Data Neo4j
TinkerPop 3

HTTP API

.NET Client API
F# Client API
Go Client API
Java Client API
NodeJS Client API
PHP Client API
Python Client API
RESTful HTTP API

Supported programming languages

JavaScript

C#
C++
Delphi
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Visual Basic

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

.Net
C
C#
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
R

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

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

Transact SQL, .NET languages, R, Python and (with SQL Server 2019) Java

yes

User defined Procedures and Functions

yes

Triggers

yes

via event handler

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

tables can be distributed across several files (horizontal partitioning); sharding through federation

yes using Neo4j Fabric

Sharding

consistent hashing

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

none

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

Causal Clustering using Raft protocol

available in in Enterprise Version only

Source-replica replication with selectable replication factor

Multi-source replication

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

with Hadoop integration

yes

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

Default ACID transactions on the local node (eventually consistent across the cluster). Atomic operations with cluster-wide ACID transactions. Eventual consistency for indexes and full-text search indexes.

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, Cluster-wide transaction available

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

by using IndexedDB, SQL.JS or proprietary FileStorage

yes

by using LevelDB

yes

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

Transient mode

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)

Cryptographically strong user authentication and audit trail

Authorization levels configured per client per database

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

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Competitive advantages

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Typical application scenarios

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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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