DBMS > Amazon DynamoDB vs. HyperSQL vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Neo4j vs. TinkerGraph

System Properties Comparison Amazon DynamoDB vs. HyperSQL vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Neo4j vs. TinkerGraph

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

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

Multithreaded, transactional RDBMS written in Java

also known as HSQLDB

Globally distributed, horizontally scalable, multi-model database service

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

A lightweight, in-memory graph engine that serves as a reference implementation of the TinkerPop3 API

Primary database model

Document store
Key-value store

Relational DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store
Wide column store

Graph DBMS

Secondary database models

Spatial DBMS

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

Score	74.45
Rank	#17	Overall
	#3	Document stores
	#2	Key-value stores

Score	3.23
Rank	#93	Overall
	#48	Relational DBMS

Score	27.71
Rank	#27	Overall
	#4	Document stores
	#2	Graph DBMS
	#3	Key-value stores
	#3	Wide column stores

Score	44.89
Rank	#21	Overall
	#1	Graph DBMS

Score	0.13
Rank	#345	Overall
	#35	Graph DBMS

Website

aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

hsqldb.org

azure.microsoft.com/services/cosmos-db

neo4j.com

tinkerpop.apache.org/docs/current/reference/#tinkergraph-gremlin

Technical documentation

docs.aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

hsqldb.org/web/hsqlDocsFrame.html

learn.microsoft.com/azure/cosmos-db

neo4j.com/docs

Developer

Amazon

Microsoft

Neo4j, Inc.

Initial release

2012

2001

2014

2007

2009

Current release

2.7.2, June 2023

5.20, May 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free tier for a limited amount of database operations

Open Source

based on BSD license

commercial

Open Source

GPL version3, commercial licenses available

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

Java

Java, Scala

Java

Server operating systems

hosted

All OS with a Java VM

Embedded (into Java applications) and Client-Server operating modes

hosted

Linux

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

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free

schema-free and schema-optional

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

JSON 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.

Secondary indexes

yes

All properties auto-indexed by default

yes

pluggable indexing subsystem, by default Apache Lucene

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

SQL-like query language

APIs and other access methods

RESTful HTTP API

HTTP API

JDBC via HTTP
JDBC
ODBC

DocumentDB API
Graph API (Gremlin)
MongoDB API
RESTful HTTP API
Table API

Bolt protocol
Cypher query language
Java API
Neo4j-OGM

Object Graph Mapper
RESTful HTTP API
Spring Data Neo4j
TinkerPop 3

TinkerPop 3

Supported programming languages

.Net
ColdFusion
Erlang
Groovy
Java
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

All languages supporting JDBC/ODBC
Java

.Net
C#
Java
JavaScript
JavaScript (Node.js)
MongoDB client drivers written for various programming languages
Python

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

Groovy
Java

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

Java, SQL

JavaScript

yes

User defined Procedures and Functions

Triggers

yes

by integration with AWS Lambda

yes

JavaScript

yes

via event handler

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

none

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

yes using Neo4j Fabric

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

none

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

Causal Clustering using Raft protocol

available in in Enterprise Version only

none

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

may be implemented via Amazon Elastic MapReduce (Amazon EMR)

with Hadoop integration

Integration with Hadoop/HDInsight on Azure*

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

can be specified for read operations

Immediate Consistency

Bounded Staleness
Consistent Prefix
Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Consistency level configurable on request level
Session Consistency

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

none

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Relationships in graphs

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

Multi-item ACID transactions with snapshot isolation within a partition

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

optional

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)

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Access rights can be defined down to the item level

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...
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Competitive advantages

Neo4j is the market leader, graph database category creator, and the most widely...
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Typical application scenarios

Real-Time Recommendations Master Data Management Identity and Access Management Network...
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Key customers

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

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

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