DBMS > Cassandra vs. CrateDB vs. HEAVY.AI vs. Neo4j vs. Virtuoso
System Properties Comparison Cassandra vs. CrateDB vs. HEAVY.AI vs. Neo4j vs. Virtuoso
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| Name | Cassandra Xexclude from comparison | CrateDB Xexclude from comparison | HEAVY.AI  Formerly named 'OmniSci', rebranded to 'HEAVY.AI' in March 2022 Xexclude from comparison | Neo4j Xexclude from comparison | Virtuoso Xexclude from comparison | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Description | Wide-column store based on ideas of BigTable and DynamoDB Optimized for write access | Distributed Database based on Lucene | A high performance, column-oriented RDBMS, specifically developed to harness the massive parallelism of modern CPU and GPU hardware | Scalable, ACID-compliant graph database designed with a high-performance distributed cluster architecture, available in self-hosted and cloud offerings | Virtuoso is a multi-model hybrid-RDBMS that supports management of data represented as relational tables and/or property graphs | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Primary database model | Wide column store | Document store Spatial DBMS Search engine Time Series DBMS Vector DBMS | Relational DBMS | Graph DBMS | Document store Graph DBMS Native XML DBMS Relational DBMS RDF store Search engine | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Secondary database models | Vector DBMS starting with release V5 | Relational DBMS | Spatial DBMS | Spatial DBMS | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Website | cassandra.apache.org | cratedb.com | github.com/heavyai/heavydb www.heavy.ai | neo4j.com | virtuoso.openlinksw.com | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Technical documentation | cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest | cratedb.com/docs | docs.heavy.ai | neo4j.com/docs | docs.openlinksw.com/virtuoso | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Developer | Apache Software Foundation Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook | Crate | HEAVY.AI, Inc. | Neo4j, Inc. | OpenLink Software | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Initial release | 2008 | 2013 | 2016 | 2007 | 1998 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Current release | 4.1.3, July 2023 | 5.10, January 2022 | 5.19, April 2024 | 7.2.11, September 2023 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| License Commercial or Open Source | Open Source Apache version 2 | Open Source | Open Source Apache Version 2; enterprise edition available | Open Source GPL version3, commercial licenses available | Open Source GPLv2, extended commercial license available | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Cloud-based only Only available as a cloud service | no | no | no | no | no | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 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. | CrateDB Cloud: a distributed SQL database that spreads data and processing across an elastic cluster of shared nothing nodes. CrateDB Cloud enables data insights at scale on Microsoft Azure, AWS and Google Cloud Platform. | Neo4j Aura: Neo4j’s fully managed cloud service: The zero-admin, always-on graph database for cloud developers. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Implementation language | Java | Java | C++ and CUDA | Java, Scala | C | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Server operating systems | BSD Linux OS X Windows | All Operating Systems, including Kubernetes with CrateDB Kubernetes Operator support | Linux | Linux Can also be used server-less as embedded Java database. OS X Solaris Windows | AIX FreeBSD HP-UX Linux OS X Solaris Windows | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Data scheme | schema-free | Flexible Schema (defined schema, partial schema, schema free) | yes | schema-free and schema-optional | yes SQL - Standard relational schema RDF - Quad (S, P, O, G) or Triple (S, P, O) XML - DTD, XML Schema DAV - freeform filesystem objects, plus User Defined Types a/k/a Dynamic Extension Type | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Typing predefined data types such as float or date | yes | yes | yes | yes | 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. | no | no | no | yes | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Secondary indexes | restricted only equality queries, not always the best performing solution | yes | no | yes pluggable indexing subsystem, by default Apache Lucene | yes | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| SQL Support of SQL | SQL-like SELECT, DML and DDL statements (CQL) | yes, but no triggers and constraints, and PostgreSQL compatibility | yes | no | yes SQL-92, SQL-200x, SQL-3, SQLX | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| APIs and other access methods | Proprietary protocol CQL (Cassandra Query Language, an SQL-like language) Thrift | ADO.NET JDBC ODBC PostgreSQL wire protocol Prometheus Remote Read/Write RESTful HTTP API | JDBC ODBC Thrift Vega | Bolt protocol Cypher query language Java API Neo4j-OGM Object Graph MapperRESTful HTTP API Spring Data Neo4j TinkerPop 3 | ADO.NET GeoSPARQL HTTP API JDBC Jena RDF API ODBC OLE DB RDF4J API RESTful HTTP API Sesame REST HTTP Protocol SOAP webservices SPARQL 1.1 WebDAV XPath XQuery XSLT | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Supported programming languages | C# C++ Clojure Erlang Go Haskell Java JavaScript Node.jsPerl PHP Python Ruby Scala | .NET Erlang Go community maintained clientJava JavaScript (Node.js) community maintained clientPerl community maintained clientPHP Python R Ruby community maintained clientScala community maintained client | All languages supporting JDBC/ODBC/Thrift Python | .Net Clojure Elixir Go Groovy Haskell Java JavaScript Perl PHP Python Ruby Scala | .Net C C# C++ Java JavaScript Perl PHP Python Ruby Visual Basic | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Server-side scripts Stored procedures | no | user defined functions (Javascript) | no | yes User defined Procedures and Functions | yes Virtuoso PL | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Triggers | yes | no | no | yes via event handler | yes | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Partitioning methods Methods for storing different data on different nodes | Sharding no "single point of failure" | Sharding | Sharding Round robin | yes using Neo4j Fabric | yes | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Replication methods Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes | selectable replication factor Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible | Configurable replication on table/partition-level | Multi-source replication | Causal Clustering using Raft protocol available in in Enterprise Version only | Chain, star, and bi-directional replication Multi-source replication Source-replica replication | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| MapReduce Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods | yes | no | no | no | yes | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Consistency concepts Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system | Eventual Consistency Immediate Consistency can be individually decided for each write operation | Eventual Consistency Read-after-write consistency on record level | Immediate Consistency | Causal and Eventual Consistency configurable in Causal Cluster setup Immediate Consistency in stand-alone mode | Immediate Consistency | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Foreign keys Referential integrity | no | no | no | yes Relationships in graphs | yes | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Transaction concepts Support to ensure data integrity after non-atomic manipulations of data | no Atomicity and isolation are supported for single operations | no unique row identifiers can be used for implementing an optimistic concurrency control strategy | no | ACID | ACID | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Concurrency Support for concurrent manipulation of data | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Durability Support for making data persistent | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| In-memory capabilities Is there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only. | no | no | yes | yes | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| User concepts Access control | Access rights for users can be defined per object | rights management via user accounts | fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard | Users, roles and permissions. Pluggable authentication with supported standards (LDAP, Active Directory, Kerberos) | Fine-grained Attribute-Based Access Control (ABAC) in addition to typical coarse-grained Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) according to SQL-standard. Pluggable authentication with supported standards (LDAP, Active Directory, Kerberos) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| More information provided by the system vendor | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Cassandra | CrateDB | HEAVY.AI Formerly named 'OmniSci', rebranded to 'HEAVY.AI' in March 2022 | Neo4j | Virtuoso | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Specific characteristics | Apache Cassandra is the leading NoSQL, distributed database management system, well... » more | The enterprise database for time series, documents, and vectors. Distributed - Native... » more | Neo4j delivers graph technology that has been battle tested for performance and scale... » more | Virtuoso is a modern multi-model RDBMS for managing data represented as tabular relations... » more | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Competitive advantages | No single point of failure ensures 100% availability . Operational simplicity for... » more | Response time in milliseconds: e ven for complex ad-hoc queries. Massive scaling... » more | Neo4j is the market leader, graph database category creator, and the most widely... » more | Performance & Scale — as exemplified by DBpedia and the LOD Cloud it spawned, i.e.,... » more | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Typical application scenarios | Internet of Things (IOT), fraud detection applications, recommendation engines, product... » more | IoT: accelerate your IIoT projects with CrateDB, delivering real-time analytics... » more | Real-Time Recommendations Master Data Management Identity and Access Management Network... » more | Used for — Analytics/BI Conceptual Data Virtualization Enterprise Knowledge Graphs... » more | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Key customers | Apple, Netflix, Uber, ING,, Intuit,Fidelity, NY Times, Outbrain, BazaarVoice, Best... » more | Across all continents, CrateDB is used by companies of all sizes to meet the most... » more | Over 800 commercial customers and over 4300 startups use Neo4j. Flagship customers... » more | Broad use across enterprises and governments including — European Union (EU) US Government... » more | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Market metrics | Cassandra is used by 40% of the Fortune 100. » more | The CrateDB open source project was started in 2013 Honorable Mention in 2021 Gartner®... » more | Neo4j boasts the world's largest graph database ecosystem with more than 140 million... » more | Largest installed-base of Multi-Model RDBMS for AI-friendly Knowledge Graphs Platform... » more | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Licensing and pricing models | Apache license Pricing for commercial distributions provided by DataStax and available... » more | See CrateDB pricing > » more | GPL v3 license that can be used all the places where you might use MySQL. Neo4j Commercial... » more | Available in both Commercial Enterprise and Open Source (GPL v2) Editions Feature... » more | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| News | This Week in Neo4j: Nodes 2024, Data Modelling, Events, Knowledge Graphs and more GQL is Here: Your Cypher Queries in a GQL World GQL: The ISO Standard for Graphs Has Arrived What Is Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)? This Week in Neo4j: Google Cloud, Analysis, Knowledge Graph, Relationships and more | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| 3rd parties | Cassandra Forward event: Want to level up your Cassandra game? Watch now replays of the March 2023 sessions. » more CData: Connect to Big Data & NoSQL through standard Drivers. » more | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| More resources | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Cassandra | CrateDB | HEAVY.AI Formerly named 'OmniSci', rebranded to 'HEAVY.AI' in March 2022 | Neo4j | Virtuoso | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| DB-Engines blog posts | Cassandra keeps climbing the ranks of the DB-Engines Ranking Oracle is the DBMS of the Year Winners, losers and an attractive newcomer in Novembers DB-Engines ranking | Applying Graph Analytics to Game of Thrones MySQL, PostgreSQL and Redis are the winners of the March ranking The openCypher Project: Help Shape the SQL for Graphs | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Recent citations in the news | What Is Cassandra? Working, Features, and Uses - Spiceworks Inc Here's What to Know About Apache Cassandra 5.0 How Uber Optimized Cassandra Operations At Scale Cassandra is the “best f*cking database for gen AI,” says DataStax CEO Microsoft extends life support for aging Apache Cassandra 3.11 database provided by Google News | CrateDB Partners with HiveMQ to Deliver a Seamless Data Management Architecture for IoT CrateDB Announces Availability of CrateDB on Google Cloud Marketplace CrateDB Appoints Sergey Gerasimenko as New CTO How We Designed CrateDB as a Realtime SQL DBMS for the Internet of Things Real-Time Analytics Database Company CrateDB Names Lars Färnström as New CEO provided by Google News | HEAVY.AI Introduces HeavyIQ, Delivering Powerful Conversational Analytics Focused on Location and Time Data Big Data Analytics: A Game Changer for Infrastructure HEAVY.AI Launches HEAVY 7.0, Introducing Real-Time Machine Learning Capabilities Making the most of geospatial intelligence The insideBIGDATA IMPACT 50 List for Q4 2023 provided by Google News | Neo4j Announces Collaboration with Microsoft to Advance GenAI and Data Solutions USA - English - India - English Neo4j Is Planning IPO on Nasdaq, Largest Owner Greenbridge Says Using Neo4j’s graph database for AI in Azure Neo4j CTO says new Graph Query Language standard will have 'massive ripple effects' Leveraging Neo4j and Amazon Bedrock for an Explainable, Secure, and Connected Generative AI Solution | Amazon ... provided by Google News | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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