DBMS > Apache Drill vs. ArangoDB vs. Neo4j vs. Snowflake vs. TerminusDB

System Properties Comparison Apache Drill vs. ArangoDB vs. Neo4j vs. Snowflake vs. TerminusDB

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Schema-free SQL Query Engine for Hadoop, NoSQL and Cloud Storage

Native multi-model DBMS for graph, document, key/value and search. All in one engine and accessible with one query language.

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

Cloud-based data warehousing service for structured and semi-structured data

Scalable Graph Database platform making enterprise data available by exploiting inferred entities and relationships

Primary database model

Document store
Relational DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store
Search engine

Graph DBMS

Relational DBMS

Graph DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
RDF store

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

Score	2.02
Rank	#124	Overall
	#22	Document stores
	#59	Relational DBMS

Score	3.26
Rank	#88	Overall
	#15	Document stores
	#5	Graph DBMS
	#12	Key-value stores
	#10	Search engines

Score	44.89
Rank	#21	Overall
	#1	Graph DBMS

Score	130.36
Rank	#8	Overall
	#5	Relational DBMS

Score	0.23
Rank	#316	Overall
	#27	Graph DBMS

Website

Technical documentation

drill.apache.org/docs

docs.arangodb.com

neo4j.com/docs

docs.snowflake.net/manuals/index.html

terminusdb.github.io/terminusdb/#

Social network pages

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

ArangoDB Inc.

Neo4j, Inc.

Snowflake Computing Inc.

DataChemist Ltd.

Initial release

2012

2007

2014

2018

Current release

1.20.3, January 2023

3.11.5, November 2023

5.20, May 2024

11.0.0, January 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache Version 2

Open Source

Apache Version 2; Commercial license (Enterprise) available

Open Source

GPL version3, commercial licenses available

commercial

Open Source

GPL V3

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.

ArangoDB Cloud –The Managed Cloud Service of ArangoDB. Provides fully managed, and monitored cluster deployments of any size, with enterprise-grade security. Get started for free and continue for as little as $0,21/hour.

Neo4j Aura: Neo4j’s fully managed cloud service: The zero-admin, always-on graph database for cloud developers.

Implementation language

C++

Java, Scala

Prolog, Rust

Server operating systems

Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux

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

hosted

Linux

Data scheme

schema-free

automatically recognizes schema within a collection

schema-free and schema-optional

yes

support of semi-structured data formats (JSON, XML, Avro)

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

string, double, boolean, list, hash

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.

yes

Secondary indexes

yes

pluggable indexing subsystem, by default Apache Lucene

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL SELECT statement is SQL:2003 compliant

yes

SQL-like query language (WOQL)

APIs and other access methods

JDBC
ODBC
RESTful HTTP API

AQL
Foxx Framework
Graph API (Gremlin)
GraphQL query language
HTTP API
Java & SpringData
JSON style queries
VelocyPack/VelocyStream

Bolt protocol
Cypher query language
Java API
Neo4j-OGM

Object Graph Mapper
RESTful HTTP API
Spring Data Neo4j
TinkerPop 3

CLI Client
JDBC
ODBC

OWL
RESTful HTTP API
WOQL (Web Object Query Language)

Supported programming languages

C++

C#
C++
Clojure
Elixir
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
R
Rust

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

JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

JavaScript
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

user defined functions

JavaScript

yes

User defined Procedures and Functions

user defined functions

yes

Triggers

yes

via event handler

similar concept for controling cloud resources

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

since version 2.0

yes using Neo4j Fabric

yes

Graph Partitioning

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Source-replica replication with configurable replication factor

Causal Clustering using Raft protocol

available in in Enterprise Version only

yes

Journaling Streams

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

can be done with stored procedures in JavaScript

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

none

Eventual Consistency

configurable per collection or per write
Immediate Consistency
OneShard (highly available, fault-tolerant deployment mode with ACID semantics)

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

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

relationships in graphs

yes

Relationships in graphs

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

Depending on the underlying data source

yes

in-memory journaling

In-memory capabilities

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

Depending on the underlying data source

User concepts

Access control

Depending on the underlying data source

yes

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

Users with fine-grained authorization concept, user roles and pluggable authentication

Role-based access control

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Graph and Beyond. With more than 11,000 stargazers on GitHub, ArangoDB is the leading...
» more

Neo4j delivers graph technology that has been battle tested for performance and scale...
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Competitive advantages

Consolidation: As a native multi-model database, can be used as a full blown document...
» more

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

Typical application scenarios

Native multi-model in ArangoDB is being used for a broad range of projects across...
» more

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

Cisco, Barclays, Refinitive, Siemens Mentor, Kabbage, Liaison, Douglas, MakeMyTrip,...
» more

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

Market metrics

ArangoDB is the leading native multi-model database with over 11,000 stargazers on...
» more

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

Licensing and pricing models

Very permissive Apache 2 License for Community Edition & commercial licenses are...
» more

GPL v3 license that can be used all the places where you might use MySQL. Neo4j Commercial...
» more

News

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10 June 2024

This Week in Neo4j: Podcast, Testing, Knowledge Graph, GenAI and more
8 June 2024

Neo4j and Snowflake Bring Graph Data Science Into the AI Data Cloud
4 June 2024

RDF vs. Property Graphs: Choosing the Right Approach for Implementing a Knowledge Graph
4 June 2024

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