DBMS > Amazon Neptune vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. mSQL vs. Neo4j

System Properties Comparison Amazon Neptune vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. mSQL vs. Neo4j

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Fast, reliable graph database built for the cloud

Globally distributed, horizontally scalable, multi-model database service

mSQL (Mini SQL) is a simple and lightweight RDBMS

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

Primary database model

Graph DBMS
RDF store

Document store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store
Wide column store

Relational DBMS

Graph DBMS

Secondary database models

Spatial DBMS

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

Score	2.20
Rank	#119	Overall
	#9	Graph DBMS
	#5	RDF stores

Score	29.04
Rank	#27	Overall
	#4	Document stores
	#2	Graph DBMS
	#3	Key-value stores
	#3	Wide column stores

Score	1.27
Rank	#167	Overall
	#77	Relational DBMS

Score	44.46
Rank	#23	Overall
	#1	Graph DBMS

Website

aws.amazon.com/neptune

azure.microsoft.com/services/cosmos-db

hughestech.com.au/products/msql

neo4j.com

Technical documentation

aws.amazon.com/neptune/developer-resources

learn.microsoft.com/azure/cosmos-db

neo4j.com/docs

Developer

Amazon

Microsoft

Hughes Technologies

Neo4j, Inc.

Initial release

2017

2014

1994

2007

Current release

4.4, October 2021

5.19, April 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free licenses can be provided

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

Java, Scala

Server operating systems

hosted

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
Solaris SPARC/x86
Windows

Linux

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

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free and schema-optional

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

SQL-like query language

A subset of ANSI SQL is implemented

no subqueries, aggregate functions, views, foreign keys, triggers

APIs and other access methods

OpenCypher
RDF 1.1 / SPARQL 1.1
TinkerPop Gremlin

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

JDBC
ODBC

Bolt protocol
Cypher query language
Java API
Neo4j-OGM

Object Graph Mapper
RESTful HTTP API
Spring Data Neo4j
TinkerPop 3

Supported programming languages

C#
Go
Java
JavaScript
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

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

C
C++
Delphi
Java
Perl
PHP
Tcl

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

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

JavaScript

yes

User defined Procedures and Functions

Triggers

JavaScript

yes

via event handler

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

none

yes using Neo4j Fabric

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.

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

none

Causal Clustering using Raft protocol

available in in Enterprise Version only

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

with Hadoop integration

Integration with Hadoop/HDInsight on Azure*

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Bounded Staleness
Consistent Prefix
Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Consistency level configurable on request level
Session Consistency

none

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

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

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

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 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...
» more

Competitive advantages

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

Typical application scenarios

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

Key customers

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

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Neo4j Joins the Connect with Confluent Partner Program
16 May 2024

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