DBMS > BigchainDB vs. CouchDB vs. Heroic vs. MariaDB vs. Neo4j

System Properties Comparison BigchainDB vs. CouchDB vs. Heroic vs. MariaDB vs. Neo4j

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

BigchainDB is scalable blockchain database offering decentralization, immutability and native assets

A native JSON - document store inspired by Lotus Notes, scalable from globally distributed server-clusters down to mobile phones.

Time Series DBMS built at Spotify based on Cassandra or Google Cloud Bigtable, and ElasticSearch

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

Primary database model

Secondary database models

Spatial DBMS

using the Geocouch extension

Document store
Graph DBMS

with OQGraph storage engine
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	0.76
Rank	#216	Overall
	#36	Document stores

Score	7.46
Rank	#51	Overall
	#7	Document stores

Score	0.13
Rank	#335	Overall
	#29	Time Series DBMS

Score	83.44
Rank	#15	Overall
	#10	Relational DBMS

Score	42.68
Rank	#21	Overall
	#1	Graph DBMS

Website

www.bigchaindb.com

couchdb.apache.org

github.com/spotify/heroic

mariadb.com

Site of MariaDB Corporation
mariadb.org

Site of MariaDB Foundation

neo4j.com

Technical documentation

bigchaindb.readthedocs.io/en/latest

docs.couchdb.org/en/stable

spotify.github.io/heroic

mariadb.com/kb/en/library

neo4j.com/docs

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top-level project, originally developed by Damien Katz, a former Lotus Notes developer

Spotify

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

The lead developer Monty Widenius is the original author of MySQL

Neo4j, Inc.

Initial release

2016

2005

2014

2009

Fork of MySQL, which was first released in 1995

2007

Current release

3.3.3, December 2023

11.5.2, August 2024

5.23, August 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

AGPL v3

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

GPL version 2, commercial enterprise subscription available

Open Source

GPL version3, commercial licenses available

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

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

Python

Erlang

Java

C and C++

Java, Scala

Server operating systems

Linux

Android
BSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
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

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

Dynamic columns are supported

schema-free and schema-optional

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

via views

yes

via Elasticsearch

yes

pluggable indexing subsystem, by default Apache Lucene

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

with proprietary extensions

APIs and other access methods

CLI Client
RESTful HTTP API

RESTful HTTP/JSON API

HQL (Heroic Query Language, a JSON-based language)
HTTP 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

Supported programming languages

Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Python
Ruby

C
C#
ColdFusion
Erlang
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Lisp
Lua
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
PL/SQL
Python
Ruby
Smalltalk

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

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

View functions in JavaScript

yes

PL/SQL compatibility added with version 10.3

yes

User defined Procedures and Functions

Triggers

yes

via event handler

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

improved architecture with release 2.0

Sharding

several options for horizontal partitioning and Sharding

yes using Neo4j Fabric

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication factor

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

yes

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

Causal Clustering using Raft protocol

available in in Enterprise Version only

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Immediate Consistency

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

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

not for MyISAM storage engine

yes

Relationships in graphs

Transaction concepts

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

atomic operations within a single document possible

ACID

not for MyISAM storage engine

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

strategy: optimistic locking

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes,with MongoDB ord RethinkDB

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

Access rights for users can be defined per database

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

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Competitive advantages

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Typical application scenarios

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Key customers

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Market metrics

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Licensing and pricing models

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