DBMS > Apache IoTDB vs. FoundationDB vs. MariaDB vs. Neo4j vs. Snowflake

System Properties Comparison Apache IoTDB vs. FoundationDB vs. MariaDB vs. Neo4j vs. Snowflake

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Created as commercial project in 2013, FoundationDB has been acquired by Apple in March 2015 and was withdrawn from the market.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

An IoT native database with high performance for data management and analysis, deployable on the edge and the cloud and integrated with Hadoop, Spark and Flink

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

MySQL application compatible open source RDBMS, enhanced with high availability, security, interoperability and performance capabilities. MariaDB ColumnStore provides a column-oriented storage engine and MariaDB Xpand supports distributed SQL.

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

Primary database model

Time Series DBMS

Document store

supported via specific layer
Key-value store
Relational DBMS

supported via specific SQL-layer

Relational DBMS

Graph DBMS

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
Graph DBMS

with OQGraph storage engine
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	1.31
Rank	#164	Overall
	#14	Time Series DBMS

Score	1.06
Rank	#185	Overall
	#31	Document stores
	#28	Key-value stores
	#85	Relational DBMS

Score	91.04
Rank	#13	Overall
	#9	Relational DBMS

Score	44.89
Rank	#21	Overall
	#1	Graph DBMS

Score	130.36
Rank	#8	Overall
	#5	Relational DBMS

Website

iotdb.apache.org

github.com/apple/foundationdb

mariadb.com

Site of MariaDB Corporation
mariadb.org

Site of MariaDB Foundation

neo4j.com

www.snowflake.com

Technical documentation

iotdb.apache.org/UserGuide/Master/QuickStart/QuickStart.html

apple.github.io/foundationdb

mariadb.com/kb/en/library

neo4j.com/docs

docs.snowflake.net/manuals/index.html

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

FoundationDB

MariaDB Corporation Ab (MariaDB Enterprise),
MariaDB Foundation (community MariaDB Server)

The lead developer Monty Widenius is the original author of MySQL

Neo4j, Inc.

Snowflake Computing Inc.

Initial release

2018

2013

2009

Fork of MySQL, which was first released in 1995

2007

2014

Current release

1.1.0, April 2023

6.2.28, November 2020

11.3.2, February 2024

5.20, May 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache Version 2.0

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

GPL version 2, commercial enterprise subscription available

Open Source

GPL version3, commercial licenses available

commercial

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.

STACKIT MariaDB offers MariaDB in a fully managed version in enterprise grade, 100% GDPR-compliant.

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

Implementation language

Java

C++

C and C++

Java, Scala

Server operating systems

All OS with a Java VM (>= 1.8)

Linux
OS X
Windows

FreeBSD
Linux
Solaris
Windows

ColumnStore storage engine not available on Windows

Linux

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

hosted

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

some layers support schemas

yes

Dynamic columns are supported

schema-free and schema-optional

yes

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

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.

yes

Secondary indexes

yes

pluggable indexing subsystem, by default Apache Lucene

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like query language

supported in specific SQL layer only

yes

with proprietary extensions

yes

APIs and other access methods

JDBC
Native API

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary native API

Bolt protocol
Cypher query language
Java API
Neo4j-OGM

Object Graph Mapper
RESTful HTTP API
Spring Data Neo4j
TinkerPop 3

CLI Client
JDBC
ODBC

Supported programming languages

C
C#
C++
Go
Java
Python
Scala

.Net
C
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
PHP
Python
Ruby
Swift

Ada
C
C#
C++
D
Eiffel
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl

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

JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

in SQL-layer only

yes

PL/SQL compatibility added with version 10.3

yes

User defined Procedures and Functions

user defined functions

Triggers

yes

via event handler

similar concept for controling cloud resources

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

horizontal partitioning (by time range) + vertical partitioning (by deviceId)

Sharding

several options for horizontal partitioning and Sharding

yes using Neo4j Fabric

yes

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication methods; using Raft/IoTConsensus algorithm to ensure strong/eventual data consistency among multiple replicas

yes

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

Causal Clustering using Raft protocol

available in in Enterprise Version only

yes

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Integration with Hadoop and Spark

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency
Strong Consistency with Raft

Linearizable consistency

Immediate Consistency

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

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

in SQL-layer only

yes

not for MyISAM storage engine

yes

Relationships in graphs

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

not for MyISAM storage engine

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

not for in-memory storage engine

yes

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

with MEMORY storage engine

User concepts

Access control

yes

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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

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

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

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Competitive advantages

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Typical application scenarios

Web, SaaS and Cloud operational applications that require high availability, scalability...
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Key customers

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Market metrics

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Neo4j boasts the world's largest graph database ecosystem with more than 140 million...
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Licensing and pricing models

MariaDB plc subscriptions cover our free, open source database, Community Server,...
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GPL v3 license that can be used all the places where you might use MySQL. Neo4j Commercial...
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