DBMS > Blazegraph vs. Cassandra vs. Neo4j vs. RDF4J vs. YugabyteDB

System Properties Comparison Blazegraph vs. Cassandra vs. Neo4j vs. RDF4J vs. YugabyteDB

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Amazon has acquired Blazegraph's domain and (probably) product. It is said that Amazon Neptune is based on Blazegraph.

Description

High-performance graph database supporting Semantic Web (RDF/SPARQL) and Graph Database (tinkerpop3, blueprints, vertex-centric) APIs with scale-out and High Availability.

Wide-column store based on ideas of BigTable and DynamoDB

Optimized for write access

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

RDF4J is a Java framework for processing RDF data, supporting both memory-based and a disk-based storage.

High-performance distributed SQL database for global, internet-scale applications. Wire and feature compatible with PostgreSQL.

Primary database model

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

Document store
Wide column store

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

Score	0.75
Rank	#219	Overall
	#19	Graph DBMS
	#8	RDF stores

Score	101.89
Rank	#12	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	44.46
Rank	#23	Overall
	#1	Graph DBMS

Score	0.69
Rank	#230	Overall
	#9	RDF stores

Score	2.91
Rank	#102	Overall
	#51	Relational DBMS

Website

Technical documentation

wiki.blazegraph.com

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

neo4j.com/docs

rdf4j.org/documentation

docs.yugabyte.com
github.com/yugabyte/yugabyte-db

Developer

Blazegraph

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Neo4j, Inc.

Since 2016 officially forked into an Eclipse project, former developer was Aduna Software.

Yugabyte Inc.

Initial release

2006

2008

2007

2004

2017

Current release

2.1.5, March 2019

4.1.3, July 2023

5.19, April 2024

2.19, September 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

extended commercial license available

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

GPL version3, commercial licenses available

Open Source

Eclipse Distribution License (EDL), v1.0.

Open Source

Apache 2.0

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.

Astra DB: Multi-cloud DBaaS built on Apache Cassandra.

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

YugabyteDB Managed is the fully managed database-as-a-service offering of YugabyteDB. Get started quickly, and effortlessly ensure continuous availability and limitless scale of your cloud native applications.

Implementation language

Java

Java, Scala

Java

C and C++

Server operating systems

Linux
OS X
Windows

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux

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

Linux
OS X
Unix
Windows

Linux
OS X

Data scheme

schema-free

schema-free and schema-optional

yes

RDF Schemas

depending on used data model

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

RDF literal types

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

restricted

only equality queries, not always the best performing solution

yes

pluggable indexing subsystem, by default Apache Lucene

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

SPARQL is used as query language

SQL-like SELECT, DML and DDL statements (CQL)

yes, PostgreSQL compatible

APIs and other access methods

Java API
RESTful HTTP API
SPARQL QUERY
SPARQL UPDATE
TinkerPop 3

Proprietary protocol

CQL (Cassandra Query Language, an SQL-like language)
Thrift

Bolt protocol
Cypher query language
Java API
Neo4j-OGM

Object Graph Mapper
RESTful HTTP API
Spring Data Neo4j
TinkerPop 3

Java API
RIO

RDF Input/Output
Sail API
SeRQL

Sesame RDF Query Language
Sesame REST HTTP Protocol
SPARQL

JDBC
YCQL, an SQL-based flexible-schema API with its roots in Cassandra Query Language
YSQL - a fully relational SQL API that is wire compatible with the SQL language in PostgreSQL

Supported programming languages

.Net
C
C++
Java
JavaScript
PHP
Python
Ruby

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

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

Java
PHP
Python

C
C#
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby
Rust
Scala

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

User defined Procedures and Functions

yes

sql, plpgsql, C

Triggers

yes

via event handler

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

yes using Neo4j Fabric

none

Hash and Range Sharding, row-level geo-partitioning

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

Causal Clustering using Raft protocol

available in in Enterprise Version only

none

Based on Raft distributed consensus protocol, minimum 3 replicas for continuous availability

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 depending on configuration

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

can be individually decided for each write operation

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

Strong consistency on writes and tunable consistency on reads

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

Atomicity and isolation are supported for single operations

ACID

Isolation support depends on the API used

Distributed ACID with Serializable & Snapshot Isolation. Inspired by Google Spanner architecture.

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

in-memory storage is supported as well

yes

based on RocksDB

In-memory capabilities

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

User concepts

Access control

Security and Authentication via Web Application Container (Tomcat, Jetty)

Access rights for users can be defined per object

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

yes

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Apache Cassandra is the leading NoSQL, distributed database management system, well...
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Neo4j delivers graph technology that has been battle tested for performance and scale...
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YugabyteDB is an open source distributed SQL database for cloud native transactional...
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Competitive advantages

No single point of failure ensures 100% availability . Operational simplicity for...
» more

Neo4j is the market leader, graph database category creator, and the most widely...
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PostgreSQL compatible: Get instantly productive with a PostgreSQL compatible RDBMS....
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Typical application scenarios

Internet of Things (IOT), fraud detection applications, recommendation engines, product...
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Real-Time Recommendations Master Data Management Identity and Access Management Network...
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Systems of record and engagement for cloud native applications that require resilience,...
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Key customers

Apple, Netflix, Uber, ING,, Intuit,Fidelity, NY Times, Outbrain, BazaarVoice, Best...
» more

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

Market metrics

Cassandra is used by 40% of the Fortune 100.
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Neo4j boasts the world's largest graph database ecosystem with more than 140 million...
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2 Million+ lifetime clusters deployed, 6.5K+ GitHub stars, 7K YugabyteDB Community...
» more

Licensing and pricing models

Apache licenseÂ Pricing for commercial distributions provided by DataStax and available...
» more

GPL v3 license that can be used all the places where you might use MySQL. Neo4j Commercial...
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Apache 2.0 license for the database
» more

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and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.