DBMS > Cassandra vs. CouchDB vs. Neo4j vs. RDF4J vs. TypeDB

System Properties Comparison Cassandra vs. CouchDB vs. Neo4j vs. RDF4J vs. TypeDB

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Wide-column store based on ideas of BigTable and DynamoDB

Optimized for write access

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

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.

TypeDB is a strongly-typed database with a rich and logical type system and TypeQL as its query language

Primary database model

Graph DBMS
Relational DBMS

Often described as a 'hyper-relational' database, since it implements the 'Entity-Relationship Paradigm' to manage complex data structures and ontologies.

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

Spatial DBMS

using the Geocouch extension

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

Score	101.89
Rank	#12	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	9.30
Rank	#45	Overall
	#7	Document stores

Score	44.46
Rank	#23	Overall
	#1	Graph DBMS

Score	0.69
Rank	#230	Overall
	#9	RDF stores

Score	0.65
Rank	#234	Overall
	#20	Graph DBMS
	#107	Relational DBMS

Website

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

docs.couchdb.org/en/stable

neo4j.com/docs

rdf4j.org/documentation

typedb.com/docs

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Apache Software Foundation

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

Neo4j, Inc.

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

Vaticle

Initial release

2008

2005

2007

2004

2016

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

3.3.3, December 2023

5.19, April 2024

2.26.3, January 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

GPL version3, commercial licenses available

Open Source

Eclipse Distribution License (EDL), v1.0.

Open Source

GPL Version 3, 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.

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.

Implementation language

Java

Erlang

Java, Scala

Java

Server operating systems

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

Android
BSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Linux

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

Linux
OS X
Unix
Windows

Linux
OS X
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

schema-free and schema-optional

yes

RDF Schemas

yes

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.

Secondary indexes

restricted

only equality queries, not always the best performing solution

yes

via views

yes

pluggable indexing subsystem, by default Apache Lucene

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

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

APIs and other access methods

Proprietary protocol

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

RESTful HTTP/JSON API

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

gRPC protocol
TypeDB Console (shell)
TypeDB Studio (Visualisation software- previously TypeDB Workbase)

Supported programming languages

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

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

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

Java
PHP
Python

All JVM based languages
Groovy
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python
Scala

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

View functions in JavaScript

yes

User defined Procedures and Functions

yes

Triggers

yes

via event handler

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

Sharding

improved architecture with release 2.0

yes using Neo4j Fabric

none

Sharding

by using Cassandra

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

Causal Clustering using Raft protocol

available in in Enterprise Version only

none

Multi-source replication

by using Cassandra

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

by using Apache Kafka and Apache Zookeeper

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

can be individually decided for each write operation

Eventual 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

substituted by the relationship feature

Transaction concepts

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

Atomicity and isolation are supported for single operations

atomic operations within a single document possible

ACID

Isolation support depends on the API used

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

strategy: optimistic locking

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

in-memory storage is supported as well

yes

In-memory capabilities

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

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users can be defined per object

Access rights for users can be defined per database

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

yes

at REST API level; other APIs in progress

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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TypeDB is a polymorphic database with a conceptual data model, a strong subtyping...
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Competitive advantages

No single point of failure ensures 100% availability . Operational simplicity for...
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Neo4j is the market leader, graph database category creator, and the most widely...
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TypeDB provides a new level of expressivity, extensibility, interoperability, and...
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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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Life sciences : TypeDB makes working with biological data much easier and accelerates...
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Key customers

Apple, Netflix, Uber, ING,, Intuit,Fidelity, NY Times, Outbrain, BazaarVoice, Best...
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Over 800 commercial customers and over 4300 startups use Neo4j. Flagship customers...
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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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Licensing and pricing models

Apache licenseÂ Pricing for commercial distributions provided by DataStax and available...
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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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Apache f or language drivers, and AGPL and Commercial for the database server. The...
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and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.