DBMS > Apache HBase vs. Neo4j vs. Riak TS

System Properties Comparison Apache HBase vs. Neo4j vs. Riak TS

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Wide-column store based on Apache Hadoop and on concepts of BigTable

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

Riak TS is a distributed NoSQL database optimized for time series data and based on Riak KV

Primary database model

Wide column store

Graph DBMS

Time Series DBMS

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

Score	24.08
Rank	#26	Overall
	#2	Wide column stores

Score	46.15
Rank	#20	Overall
	#1	Graph DBMS

Score	0.18
Rank	#318	Overall
	#27	Time Series DBMS

Website

hbase.apache.org

neo4j.com

Technical documentation

hbase.apache.org/book.html

neo4j.com/docs

www.tiot.jp/riak-docs/riak/ts/latest

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top-level project, originally developed by Powerset

Neo4j, Inc.

Open Source, formerly Basho Technologies

Initial release

2008

2007

2015

Current release

2.3.4, January 2021

5.23, August 2024

3.0.0, September 2022

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

GPL version3, commercial licenses available

Open Source

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

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Database as a Service

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Implementation language

Java

Java, Scala

Erlang

Server operating systems

Linux
Unix
Windows

using Cygwin

Linux

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

Linux
OS X

Data scheme

schema-free, schema definition possible

schema-free and schema-optional

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

options to bring your own types, AVRO

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

restricted

SQL

Support of SQL

yes, limited

APIs and other access methods

Java API
RESTful HTTP API
Thrift

Bolt protocol
Cypher query language
Java API
Neo4j-OGM

Object Graph Mapper
RESTful HTTP API
Spring Data Neo4j
TinkerPop 3

HTTP API
Native Erlang Interface

Supported programming languages

C
C#
C++
Groovy
Java
PHP
Python
Scala

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

unofficial client library
C#
C++

unofficial client library
Clojure

unofficial client library
Dart

unofficial client library
Erlang
Go

unofficial client library
Groovy

unofficial client library
Haskell

unofficial client library
Java
JavaScript

unofficial client library
Lisp

unofficial client library
Perl

unofficial client library
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

unofficial client library
Smalltalk

unofficial client library

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

Coprocessors in Java

yes

User defined Procedures and Functions

Erlang

Triggers

yes

via event handler

yes

pre-commit hooks and post-commit hooks

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

yes using Neo4j Fabric

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

Causal Clustering using Raft protocol

available in in Enterprise Version only

selectable replication factor

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency or Eventual Consistency

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

Eventual Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Relationships in graphs

links between datasets can be stored

Transaction concepts

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

Single row ACID (across millions of columns)

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

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 Control Lists (ACL) for RBAC, integration with Apache Ranger for RBAC & ABAC

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

More information provided by the system vendor

News

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24 March 2025

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20 March 2025

Modeling Agent Memory
20 March 2025

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18 March 2025

Is Traditional SaaS Behind Us? The Graph + GenAI Revolution
18 March 2025

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