DBMS > Apache Impala vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. Neo4j vs. TempoIQ vs. Vertica

System Properties Comparison Apache Impala vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. Neo4j vs. TempoIQ vs. Vertica

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

TempoIQ seems to be decommissioned. It will be removed from the DB-Engines ranking.

Description

Analytic DBMS for Hadoop

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

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

Scalable analytics DBMS for sensor data, provided as a service (SaaS)

Cloud or off-cloud analytical database and query engine for structured and semi-structured streaming and batch data. Machine learning platform with built-in algorithms, data preparation capabilities, and model evaluation and management via SQL or Python.

Primary database model

Column oriented

Secondary database models

Document store

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

Spatial DBMS
Time Series DBMS

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

Score	10.63
Rank	#40	Overall
	#24	Relational DBMS

Score	807.76
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	42.68
Rank	#21	Overall
	#1	Graph DBMS

Score	9.62
Rank	#42	Overall
	#26	Relational DBMS

Website

impala.apache.org

www.microsoft.com/en-us/sql-server

neo4j.com

tempoiq.com (offline)

www.vertica.com

Technical documentation

impala.apache.org/impala-docs.html

learn.microsoft.com/en-US/sql/sql-server

neo4j.com/docs

vertica.com/documentation

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top-level project, originally developed by Cloudera

Microsoft

Neo4j, Inc.

TempoIQ

OpenText

previously Micro Focus and Hewlett Packard

Initial release

2013

1989

2007

2012

2005

Current release

4.1.0, June 2022

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

5.23, August 2024

12.0.3, January 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache Version 2

commercial

restricted free version is available

Open Source

GPL version3, commercial licenses available

commercial

Limited community edition free

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

on-premises, all major clouds - Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform and containers

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

Providers of DBaaS offerings, please contact us to be listed.

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

Implementation language

C++

Java, Scala

C++

Server operating systems

Linux

Linux
Windows

Linux

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

Linux

Data scheme

yes

schema-free and schema-optional

schema-free

Yes, but also semi-structure/unstructured data storage, and complex hierarchical data (like Parquet) stored and/or queried.

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

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

No Indexes Required. Different internal optimization strategy, but same functionality included.

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like DML and DDL statements

yes

Full 1999 standard plus machine learning, time series and geospatial. Over 650 functions.

APIs and other access methods

JDBC
ODBC

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
OLE DB
Tabular Data Stream (TDS)

Bolt protocol
Cypher query language
Java API
Neo4j-OGM

Object Graph Mapper
RESTful HTTP API
Spring Data Neo4j
TinkerPop 3

HTTP API

ADO.NET
JDBC
Kafka Connector
ODBC
RESTful HTTP API
Spark Connector
vSQL

character-based, interactive, front-end utility

Supported programming languages

All languages supporting JDBC/ODBC

C#
C++
Delphi
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Visual Basic

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

C#
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Python
Ruby

C#
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
R

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

user defined functions and integration of map-reduce

Transact SQL, .NET languages, R, Python and (with SQL Server 2019) Java

yes

User defined Procedures and Functions

yes, PostgreSQL PL/pgSQL, with minor differences

Triggers

yes

via event handler

yes

Realtime Alerts

yes, called Custom Alerts

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

tables can be distributed across several files (horizontal partitioning); sharding through federation

yes using Neo4j Fabric

horizontal partitioning, hierarchical partitioning

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication factor

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

Causal Clustering using Raft protocol

available in in Enterprise Version only

Multi-source replication

One, or more copies of data replicated across nodes, or object-store used for repository.

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

query execution via MapReduce

Bi-directional Spark integration

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency

Immediate Consistency

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

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

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 rights for users, groups and roles

based on Apache Sentry and Kerberos

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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

simple authentication-based access control

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard; supports Kerberos, LDAP, Ident and hash

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Licensing and pricing models

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