DBMS > Amazon DynamoDB vs. FoundationDB vs. Google Cloud Bigtable vs. H2GIS vs. Neo4j

System Properties Comparison Amazon DynamoDB vs. FoundationDB vs. Google Cloud Bigtable vs. H2GIS vs. Neo4j

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Created as commercial project in 2013, FoundationDB has been acquired by Apple in March 2015 and was withdrawn from the market. As a consequence, the product was removed from the DB-Engines ranking. In April 2018, Apple open-sourced FoundationDB and it therefore reappears in the ranking.

Description

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

Ordered key-value store. Core features are complimented by layers.

Google's NoSQL Big Data database service. It's the same database that powers many core Google services, including Search, Analytics, Maps, and Gmail.

Spatial extension of H2

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
Key-value store

Document store

supported via specific layer
Key-value store
Relational DBMS

supported via specific SQL-layer

Key-value store
Wide column store

Spatial DBMS

Graph DBMS

Secondary database models

Relational DBMS

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

Score	70.06
Rank	#17	Overall
	#3	Document stores
	#2	Key-value stores

Score	0.97
Rank	#191	Overall
	#32	Document stores
	#28	Key-value stores
	#87	Relational DBMS

Score	2.97
Rank	#92	Overall
	#15	Key-value stores
	#8	Wide column stores

Score	0.00
Rank	#385	Overall
	#7	Spatial DBMS

Score	42.68
Rank	#21	Overall
	#1	Graph DBMS

Website

aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

github.com/apple/foundationdb

cloud.google.com/bigtable

www.h2gis.org

neo4j.com

Technical documentation

docs.aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

apple.github.io/foundationdb

cloud.google.com/bigtable/docs

www.h2gis.org/docs/home

neo4j.com/docs

Developer

Amazon

FoundationDB

Google

CNRS

Neo4j, Inc.

Initial release

2012

2013

2015

2013

2007

Current release

6.2.28, November 2020

5.23, August 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free tier for a limited amount of database operations

Open Source

Apache 2.0

commercial

Open Source

LGPL 3.0

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

C++

Java

Java, Scala

Server operating systems

hosted

Linux
OS X
Windows

hosted

Linux

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

Data scheme

schema-free

some layers support schemas

schema-free

yes

schema-free and schema-optional

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

some layers support typing

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.

Secondary indexes

yes

pluggable indexing subsystem, by default Apache Lucene

SQL

Support of SQL

supported in specific SQL layer only

yes

APIs and other access methods

RESTful HTTP API

gRPC (using protocol buffers) API
HappyBase (Python library)
HBase compatible API (Java)

Bolt protocol
Cypher query language
Java API
Neo4j-OGM

Object Graph Mapper
RESTful HTTP API
Spring Data Neo4j
TinkerPop 3

Supported programming languages

.Net
ColdFusion
Erlang
Groovy
Java
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

.Net
C
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
PHP
Python
Ruby
Swift

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

Java

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

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

in SQL-layer only

yes

based on H2

yes

User defined Procedures and Functions

Triggers

yes

by integration with AWS Lambda

yes

via event handler

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

none

yes using Neo4j Fabric

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

Internal replication in Colossus, and regional replication between two clusters in different zones

yes

based on H2

Causal Clustering using Raft protocol

available in in Enterprise Version only

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

may be implemented via Amazon Elastic MapReduce (Amazon EMR)

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

can be specified for read operations

Linearizable consistency

Immediate consistency (for a single cluster), Eventual consistency (for two or more replicated clusters)

Immediate Consistency

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

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

in SQL-layer only

yes

Relationships in graphs

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

ACID

Atomic single-row operations

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

yes, multi-version concurrency control (MVCC)

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

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

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

yes

based on H2

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

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

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Market metrics

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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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