DBMS > Amazon DynamoDB vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. GraphDB vs. RDF4J vs. Weaviate

System Properties Comparison Amazon DynamoDB vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. GraphDB vs. RDF4J vs. Weaviate

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Hosted, scalable database service by Amazon with the data stored in Amazons cloud

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

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.

RDF4J is a Java framework for processing RDF data, supporting both memory-based and a disk-based storage.

An AI-native realtime vector database engine that integrates scalable machine learning models.

Primary database model

Document store
Key-value store

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

Score	74.07
Rank	#17	Overall
	#3	Document stores
	#2	Key-value stores

Score	14.29
Rank	#39	Overall
	#6	Document stores

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

Score	0.69
Rank	#230	Overall
	#9	RDF stores

Score	1.73
Rank	#143	Overall
	#5	Vector DBMS

Website

aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

www.ontotext.com

rdf4j.org

github.com/weaviate/weaviate
weaviate.io

Technical documentation

docs.aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

firebase.google.com/docs/database

graphdb.ontotext.com/documentation

rdf4j.org/documentation

weaviate.io/developers/weaviate

Social network pages

Developer

Amazon

Google

acquired by Google 2014

Ontotext

Since 2016 officially forked into an Eclipse project, former developer was Aduna Software.

Weaviate B.V.

Initial release

2012

2000

2004

2019

Current release

10.4, October 2023

1.19, May 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free tier for a limited amount of database operations

commercial

Some plugins of GraphDB Workbench are open sourced

Open Source

Eclipse Distribution License (EDL), v1.0.

Open Source

commercial license available with Weaviate Enterprise

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.

Implementation language

Java

Server operating systems

hosted

All OS with a Java VM
Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
OS X
Unix
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

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

yes

RDF Schemas

yes, maps to GraphQL interface

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

string, int, float, geo point, date, cross reference, fuzzy references

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.

Secondary indexes

yes

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

yes

all data objects are indexed in a semantic vector space (the Contextionary), all primitive fields are indexed

SQL

Support of SQL

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

GraphQL is used as query language

APIs and other access methods

RESTful HTTP API

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

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

Java API
RIO

RDF Input/Output
Sail API
SeRQL

Sesame RDF Query Language
Sesame REST HTTP Protocol
SPARQL

GraphQL query language
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Supported programming languages

.Net
ColdFusion
Erlang
Groovy
Java
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

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

Java
PHP
Python

JavaScript / TypeScript
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

limited functionality with using 'rules'

well-defined plugin interfaces; JavaScript server-side extensibility

yes

Triggers

yes

by integration with AWS Lambda

Callbacks are triggered when data changes

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

none

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

Multi-source replication

none

yes

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

may be implemented via Amazon Elastic MapReduce (Amazon EMR)

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

can be specified for read operations

Eventual Consistency

if the client is offline
Immediate Consistency

if the client is online

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

Eventual Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Constraint checking

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

ACID across one or more tables within a single AWS account and region

yes

ACID

Isolation support depends on the API used

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

in-memory storage is supported as well

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

Access rights for users and roles can be defined via the AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM)

yes, based on authentication and database rules

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.

API Keys
OpenID Connect Discovery

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Ontotext GraphDB is a semantic database engine that allows organizations to build...
» more

Weaviate is an open source vector database that is robust, scalable, cloud-native,...
» more

Competitive advantages

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

Flexible deployment - Free, open source or fully-managed cloud vector database service...
» more

Typical application scenarios

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

As a database supporting the development of generative AI and semantic search applications...
» more

Key customers

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

All companies that have data.
» more

Market metrics

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

As of mid 2023: Over 2 million open source downloads 3500+ Weaviate Slack community...
» more

Licensing and pricing models

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

Weaviate is open-source, and free to use. Weaviate is also available as a fully managed...
» more

News

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8 May 2024

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2 May 2024

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26 April 2024

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19 April 2024

How Knowledge Graphs Power Data Mesh and Data Fabric
10 April 2024

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