DBMS > Alibaba Cloud MaxCompute vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. Google BigQuery vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. Neo4j

System Properties Comparison Alibaba Cloud MaxCompute vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. Google BigQuery vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. Neo4j

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

MaxCompute (previously known as ODPS) is a general purpose, fully managed, multi-tenancy data processing platform for large-scale data warehousing

Cloud-hosted realtime document store. iOS, Android, and JavaScript clients share one Realtime Database instance and automatically receive updates with the newest data.

Large scale data warehouse service with append-only tables

Fully managed big data interactive analytics platform

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

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

a graph-processing framework is available with the graphs being stored in tables

Document store

Relational DBMS

column oriented

Graph DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store

If a column is of type dynamic docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/kusto/query/scalar-data-types/dynamic then it's possible to add arbitrary JSON documents in this cell
Event Store

this is the general usage pattern at Microsoft. Billing, Logs, Telemetry events are stored in ADX and the state of an individual entity is defined by the arg_max(timestamps)
Spatial DBMS
Search engine

support for complex search expressions docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/kusto/query/parseoperator FTS, Geospatial docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/kusto/query/geo-point-to-geohash-function distributed search -> ADX acts as a distributed search engine
Time Series DBMS

see docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/data-explorer/time-series-analysis

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

Score	0.77
Rank	#214	Overall
	#98	Relational DBMS

Score	14.29
Rank	#39	Overall
	#6	Document stores

Score	60.38
Rank	#19	Overall
	#13	Relational DBMS

Score	4.38
Rank	#77	Overall
	#41	Relational DBMS

Score	44.46
Rank	#23	Overall
	#1	Graph DBMS

Website

www.alibabacloud.com/product/maxcompute

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

cloud.google.com/bigquery

azure.microsoft.com/services/data-explorer

neo4j.com

Technical documentation

www.alibabacloud.com/help/en/maxcompute

firebase.google.com/docs/database

cloud.google.com/bigquery/docs

docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/data-explorer

neo4j.com/docs

Developer

Alibaba

Google

acquired by Google 2014

Google

Microsoft

Neo4j, Inc.

Initial release

2016

2012

2010

2019

2007

Current release

cloud service with continuous releases

5.19, April 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

GPL version3, commercial licenses available

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

Java, Scala

Server operating systems

hosted

Linux

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

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

yes

Fixed schema with schema-less datatypes (dynamic)

schema-free and schema-optional

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

bool, datetime, dynamic, guid, int, long, real, string, timespan, double: docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/kusto/query/scalar-data-types

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

all fields are automatically indexed

yes

pluggable indexing subsystem, by default Apache Lucene

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like query language

yes

Kusto Query Language (KQL), SQL subset

APIs and other access methods

Fluentd
Flume
MaxCompute Console

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Microsoft SQL Server communication protocol (MS-TDS)
RESTful HTTP API

Bolt protocol
Cypher query language
Java API
Neo4j-OGM

Object Graph Mapper
RESTful HTTP API
Spring Data Neo4j
TinkerPop 3

Supported programming languages

Java

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

.Net
Java
JavaScript
Objective-C
PHP
Python
Ruby

.Net
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PowerShell
Python
R

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

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

user defined functions

in Java

limited functionality with using 'rules'

user defined functions

in JavaScript

Yes, possible languages: KQL, Python, R

yes

User defined Procedures and Functions

Triggers

Callbacks are triggered when data changes

yes

see docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/kusto/management/updatepolicy

yes

via event handler

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

none

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

yes using Neo4j Fabric

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service. Replication either local, cross-facility or geo-redundant.

Causal Clustering using Raft protocol

available in in Enterprise Version only

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

Spark connector (open source): github.com/Azure/azure-kusto-spark

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency

if the client is offline
Immediate Consistency

if the client is online

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

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

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Relationships in graphs

Transaction concepts

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

yes

Since BigQuery is designed for querying data

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

In-memory capabilities

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

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users and roles

yes, based on authentication and database rules

Access privileges (owner, writer, reader) on dataset, table or view level

Google Cloud Identity & Access Management (IAM)

Azure Active Directory Authentication

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

Competitive advantages

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

Typical application scenarios

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

Key customers

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

News

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

GQL: The ISO Standard for Graphs Has Arrived
25 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.