DBMS > Amazon Aurora vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. Neo4j vs. QuestDB vs. TimescaleDB

System Properties Comparison Amazon Aurora vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. Neo4j vs. QuestDB vs. TimescaleDB

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

MySQL and PostgreSQL compatible cloud service by Amazon

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

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

A high performance open source SQL database for time series data

A time series DBMS optimized for fast ingest and complex queries, based on PostgreSQL

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Graph DBMS

Time Series DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

Relational DBMS

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

Score	8.50
Rank	#49	Overall
	#31	Relational DBMS

Score	829.80
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	44.47
Rank	#23	Overall
	#1	Graph DBMS

Score	2.48
Rank	#115	Overall
	#9	Time Series DBMS

Score	4.87
Rank	#74	Overall
	#4	Time Series DBMS

Website

aws.amazon.com/rds/aurora

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

neo4j.com

questdb.io

www.timescale.com

Technical documentation

docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/AuroraUserGuide/CHAP_Aurora.html

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

neo4j.com/docs

questdb.io/docs

docs.timescale.com

Developer

Amazon

Microsoft

Neo4j, Inc.

QuestDB Technology Inc

Timescale

Initial release

2015

1989

2007

2014

2017

Current release

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

5.19, April 2024

2.13.0, November 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

restricted free version is available

Open Source

GPL version3, commercial licenses available

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

Apache 2.0

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

C++

Java, Scala

Java (Zero-GC), C++, Rust

Server operating systems

hosted

Linux
Windows

Linux

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

Linux
macOS
Windows

Linux
OS X
Windows

Data scheme

yes

schema-free and schema-optional

yes

schema-free via InfluxDB Line Protocol

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

numerics, strings, booleans, arrays, JSON blobs, geospatial dimensions, currencies, binary data, other complex data types

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

yes

SQL with time-series extensions

yes

full PostgreSQL SQL syntax

APIs and other access methods

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC

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 REST
InfluxDB Line Protocol (TCP/UDP)
JDBC
PostgreSQL wire protocol

ADO.NET
JDBC
native C library
ODBC
streaming API for large objects

Supported programming languages

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

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

PostgreSQL driver
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python
Rust

over HTTP

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java

JDBC
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

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

yes

User defined Procedures and Functions

user defined functions, PL/pgSQL, PL/Tcl, PL/Perl, PL/Python, PL/Java, PL/PHP, PL/R, PL/Ruby, PL/Scheme, PL/Unix shell

Triggers

yes

via event handler

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

horizontal partitioning

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

yes using Neo4j Fabric

horizontal partitioning (by timestamps)

yes, across time and space (hash partitioning) attributes

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Source-replica replication

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

Causal Clustering using Raft protocol

available in in Enterprise Version only

Source-replica replication with eventual consistency

Source-replica replication with hot standby and reads on replicas

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

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

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Relationships in graphs

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

ACID for single-table writes

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

through memory mapped files

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)

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

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

Relational model with native time series support Column-based storage and time partitioned...
» more

Competitive advantages

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

High ingestion throughput: peak of 4M rows/sec (TSBS Benchmark) Code optimizations...
» more

Typical application scenarios

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

Financial tick data Industrial IoT Application Metrics Monitoring
» more

Key customers

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

Banks & Hedge funds, Yahoo, OKX, Airbus, Aquis Exchange, Net App, Cloudera, Airtel,...
» 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

Open source Apache 2.0 QuestDB Enterprise QuestDB Cloud
» more

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and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.