DBMS > AllegroGraph vs. ClickHouse vs. Google Cloud Spanner vs. GraphDB vs. Neo4j

System Properties Comparison AllegroGraph vs. ClickHouse vs. Google Cloud Spanner vs. GraphDB vs. Neo4j

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

High performance, persistent RDF store with additional support for Graph DBMS

A high-performance, column-oriented SQL DBMS for online analytical processing (OLAP) that uses all available system resources to their full potential to process each analytical query as fast as possible. It is available as both an open-source software and a cloud offering.

A horizontally scalable, globally consistent, relational database service. It is the externalization of the core Google database that runs the biggest aspects of Google, like Ads and Google Play.

Enterprise-ready RDF and graph database with efficient reasoning, cluster and external index synchronization support. It supports also SQL JDBC access to Knowledge Graph and GraphQL over SPARQL.

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

Primary database model

Document store

with version 6.5
Graph DBMS
RDF store
Vector DBMS

Relational DBMS

Graph DBMS
RDF store

Graph DBMS

Secondary database models

Spatial DBMS

Time Series DBMS

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

Score	1.06
Rank	#187	Overall
	#30	Document stores
	#17	Graph DBMS
	#7	RDF stores
	#7	Vector DBMS

Score	16.34
Rank	#38	Overall
	#23	Relational DBMS

Score	2.89
Rank	#103	Overall
	#52	Relational DBMS

Score	3.32
Rank	#91	Overall
	#6	Graph DBMS
	#4	RDF stores

Score	44.46
Rank	#23	Overall
	#1	Graph DBMS

Website

allegrograph.com

clickhouse.com

cloud.google.com/spanner

www.ontotext.com

neo4j.com

Technical documentation

franz.com/agraph/support/documentation/current/agraph-introduction.html

clickhouse.com/docs

cloud.google.com/spanner/docs

graphdb.ontotext.com/documentation

neo4j.com/docs

Social network pages

Developer

Franz Inc.

Clickhouse Inc.

Google

Ontotext

Neo4j, Inc.

Initial release

2004

2016

2017

2000

2007

Current release

8.0, December 2023

v24.4.1.2088-stable, May 2024

10.4, October 2023

5.19, April 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Limited community edition free

Open Source

Apache 2.0

commercial

Some plugins of GraphDB Workbench are open sourced

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.

Aiven for Clickhouse: Managed cloud data warehousing with high-speed analytics.
ClickHouse Cloud: Get the performance you love from open source ClickHouse in a serverless offering that takes care of the details so you can spend more time getting insight out of the fastest database on earth.
DoubleCloud: Fully managed ClickHouse alongside best-in-class managed open-source services to build analytics at scale.

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

Implementation language

C++

Java

Java, Scala

Server operating systems

Linux
OS X
Windows

FreeBSD
Linux
macOS

hosted

All OS with a Java VM
Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux

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

Data scheme

yes

RDF schemas

yes

schema-free and OWL/RDFS-schema support; RDF shapes

schema-free and schema-optional

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.

bulk load of XML files possible

Secondary indexes

yes

yes, supports real-time synchronization and indexing in SOLR/Elastic search/Lucene and GeoSPARQL geometry data indexes

yes

pluggable indexing subsystem, by default Apache Lucene

SQL

Support of SQL

SPARQL is used as query language

Close to ANSI SQL (SQL/JSON + extensions)

yes

Query statements complying to ANSI 2011

stored SPARQL accessed as SQL using Apache Calcite through JDBC/ODBC

APIs and other access methods

RESTful HTTP API
SPARQL

gRPC
HTTP REST
JDBC
MySQL wire protocol
ODBC
PostgreSQL wire protocol
Proprietary protocol

gRPC (using protocol buffers) API
JDBC

At present, JDBC supports read-only queries. No support for DDL or DML statements.
RESTful HTTP API

GeoSPARQL
GraphQL
GraphQL Federation
Java API
JDBC
RDF4J API
RDFS
RIO
Sail API
Sesame REST HTTP Protocol
SPARQL 1.1

Bolt protocol
Cypher query language
Java API
Neo4j-OGM

Object Graph Mapper
RESTful HTTP API
Spring Data Neo4j
TinkerPop 3

Supported programming languages

C#
Clojure
Java
Lisp
Perl
Python
Ruby
Scala

3rd party library
C++
Elixir

3rd party library
Go

3rd party library
Java

3rd party library
JavaScript (Node.js)

3rd party library
Kotlin

3rd party library
Nim

3rd party library
Perl

3rd party library
PHP

3rd party library
Python

3rd party library
R

3rd party library
Ruby

3rd party library
Rust
Scala

3rd party library

Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

.Net
C#
Clojure
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

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

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

JavaScript or Common Lisp

yes

well-defined plugin interfaces; JavaScript server-side extensibility

yes

User defined Procedures and Functions

Triggers

yes

via event handler

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

with Federation

key based and custom

Sharding

none

yes using Neo4j Fabric

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

Asynchronous and synchronous physical replication; geographically distributed replicas; support for object storages.

Multi-source replication with 3 replicas for regional instances.

Multi-source replication

Causal Clustering using Raft protocol

available in in Enterprise Version only

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

using Google Cloud Dataflow

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency or Eventual Consistency depending on configuration

Immediate Consistency

Immediate Consistency, Eventual consistency (configurable in cluster mode per master or individual client request)

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

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

by using interleaved tables, this features focuses more on performance improvements than on referential integrity

yes

Constraint checking

yes

Relationships in graphs

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

Strict serializable isolation

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.

yes

User concepts

Access control

Users with fine-grained authorization concept, user roles and pluggable authentication

Access rights for users and roles. Column and row based policies. Quotas and resource limits. Pluggable authentication with LDAP and Kerberos. Password based, X.509 certificate, and SSH key authentication.

Access rights for users, groups and roles based on Google Cloud Identity and Access Management (IAM)

Default Basic authentication through RDF4J client, or via Java when run with cURL, default token-based in the Workbench or via Rest API, optional access through OpenID or Kerberos single sign-on.

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

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Knowledge Graph Platform Leader FedShard - Designed for Entity-Event Knowledge Graph...
» more

Ontotext GraphDB is a semantic database engine that allows organizations to build...
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Neo4j delivers graph technology that has been battle tested for performance and scale...
» more

Competitive advantages

AllegroGraph is uniquely suited to support adhoc queries through SPARQL, Prolog and...
» more

GraphDB allows you to link text and data in big knowledge graphs. It’s easy to experiment...
» more

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

Typical application scenarios

Metadata enrichment and management, linked data publishing, semantic inferencing...
» more

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

Key customers

GraphDB provides a platform for building next-generation AI and Knowledge Graph...
» more

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

Market metrics

GraphDB is the most utilized semantic triplestore for mission-critical enterprise...
» more

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

Licensing and pricing models

GraphDB Free is a non-commercial version and is free to use. GraphDB Enterprise edition...
» more

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

News

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17 April 2024

100 Companies That Matter in KM – Franz Inc.
3 April 2024

Exploring AllegroGraph v8 – Unleashing the Power of Neuro-Symbolic AI (Recorded Webinar)
9 February 2024

What is Neuro-Symbolic AI?
23 January 2024

Allegro CL v11 – Now Available! – The Neuro-Symbolic AI Programming Platform
8 January 2024

Understanding the Graph Center of Excellence
17 May 2024

Migrating From LPG to RDF Graph Model
8 May 2024

Case study: Policy Enforcement Automation With Semantics
2 May 2024

Okay, RAG… We Have a Problem
26 April 2024

Scaling Understanding with the Help of Feedback Loops, Knowledge Graphs and NLP
19 April 2024

Neo4j Joins the Connect with Confluent Partner Program
16 May 2024

10 Inspiring Projects to Spark Your NODES 2024 Presentation
15 May 2024

New Security Feature in Neo4j Aura: Customer Managed Keys
15 May 2024

Safeguarding Elections: How Graph Technology Powers Groundbreaking Research on Political Ads
13 May 2024

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

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