DBMS > Amazon Neptune vs. Apache Cassandra vs. FoundationDB vs. GraphDB

System Properties Comparison Amazon Neptune vs. Apache Cassandra vs. FoundationDB vs. GraphDB

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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Created as commercial project in 2013, FoundationDB has been acquired by Apple in March 2015 and was withdrawn from the market.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

Fast, reliable graph database built for the cloud

Wide-column store based on ideas of BigTable and DynamoDB

Optimized for write access

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

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.

Primary database model

Graph DBMS
RDF store

Wide column store

Document store

supported via specific layer
Key-value store
Relational DBMS

supported via specific SQL-layer

Graph DBMS
RDF store

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

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

Score	2.20
Rank	#113	Overall
	#9	Graph DBMS
	#5	RDF stores

Score	98.94
Rank	#11	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

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

Score	2.76
Rank	#99	Overall
	#8	Graph DBMS
	#4	RDF stores

Website

aws.amazon.com/neptune

cassandra.apache.org

github.com/apple/foundationdb

www.ontotext.com

Technical documentation

aws.amazon.com/neptune/developer-resources

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

apple.github.io/foundationdb

graphdb.ontotext.com/documentation

Social network pages

Developer

Amazon

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

FoundationDB

Ontotext

Initial release

2017

2008

2013

2000

Current release

5.0-rc1, July 2024

6.2.28, November 2020

10.4, October 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

Apache 2.0

commercial

Some plugins of GraphDB Workbench are open sourced

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.

Astra DB: Multi-cloud DBaaS built on Apache Cassandra.

Implementation language

Java

C++

Java

Server operating systems

hosted

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
OS X
Windows

All OS with a Java VM
Linux
OS X
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

some layers support schemas

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

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

restricted

only equality queries, not always the best performing solution

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

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like SELECT, DML and DDL statements (CQL)

supported in specific SQL layer only

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

APIs and other access methods

OpenCypher
RDF 1.1 / SPARQL 1.1
TinkerPop Gremlin

Proprietary protocol

CQL (Cassandra Query Language, an SQL-like language)
Thrift

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

Supported programming languages

C#
Go
Java
JavaScript
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

.Net
C
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
PHP
Python
Ruby
Swift

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

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

in SQL-layer only

well-defined plugin interfaces; JavaScript server-side extensibility

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

Sharding

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-availability zones high availability, asynchronous replication for up to 15 read replicas within a single region. Global database clusters consists of a primary write DB cluster in one region, and up to five secondary read DB clusters in different regions. Each secondary region can have up to 16 reader instances.

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

yes

Multi-source replication

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

can be individually decided for each write operation

Linearizable consistency

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

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Relationships in graphs

in SQL-layer only

yes

Constraint checking

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

Atomicity and isolation are supported for single operations

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

with encyption-at-rest

yes

In-memory capabilities

Is there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.

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 can be defined per object

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.

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Apache Cassandra is the leading NoSQL, distributed database management system, well...
» more

Ontotext GraphDB is a semantic database engine that allows organizations to build...
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Competitive advantages

No single point of failure ensures 100% availability . Operational simplicity for...
» more

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

Typical application scenarios

Internet of Things (IOT), fraud detection applications, recommendation engines, product...
» more

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

Key customers

Apple, Netflix, Uber, ING,, Intuit,Fidelity, NY Times, Outbrain, BazaarVoice, Best...
» more

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

Market metrics

Apache Cassandra is used by 40% of the Fortune 100.
» more

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

Licensing and pricing models

Apache licenseÂ Pricing for commercial distributions provided by DataStax and available...
» more

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

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