DBMS > Cassandra vs. EJDB vs. Google Cloud Datastore vs. Neo4j vs. SAP HANA

System Properties Comparison Cassandra vs. EJDB vs. Google Cloud Datastore vs. Neo4j vs. SAP HANA

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Wide-column store based on ideas of BigTable and DynamoDB

Optimized for write access

Embeddable document-store database library with JSON representation of queries (in MongoDB style)

Automatically scaling NoSQL Database as a Service (DBaaS) on the Google Cloud Platform

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

In-memory, column based data store. Available as appliance or cloud service

Primary database model

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

Document store
Graph DBMS

with SAP Hana, Enterprise Edition
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	101.89
Rank	#12	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	0.27
Rank	#297	Overall
	#44	Document stores

Score	4.47
Rank	#76	Overall
	#12	Document stores

Score	44.46
Rank	#23	Overall
	#1	Graph DBMS

Score	44.69
Rank	#22	Overall
	#16	Relational DBMS

Website

cassandra.apache.org

github.com/Softmotions/ejdb

cloud.google.com/datastore

neo4j.com

www.sap.com/products/hana.html

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

github.com/Softmotions/ejdb/blob/master/README.md

cloud.google.com/datastore/docs

neo4j.com/docs

help.sap.com/hana

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Softmotions

Google

Neo4j, Inc.

SAP

Initial release

2008

2012

2008

2007

2010

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

5.19, April 2024

2.0 SPS07 (April 4, 2023), April 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

GPLv2

commercial

Open Source

GPL version3, commercial licenses available

commercial

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

also available as a cloud based 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

Java, Scala

Server operating systems

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

server-less

hosted

Linux

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

Appliance or cloud-service

Data scheme

schema-free

schema-free and schema-optional

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

string, integer, double, bool, date, object_id

yes, details here

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

pluggable indexing subsystem, by default Apache Lucene

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

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

SQL-like query language (GQL)

yes

APIs and other access methods

Proprietary protocol

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

in-process shared library

gRPC (using protocol buffers) API
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Bolt protocol
Cypher query language
Java API
Neo4j-OGM

Object Graph Mapper
RESTful HTTP API
Spring Data Neo4j
TinkerPop 3

JDBC
ODBC

Supported programming languages

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

Actionscript
C
C#
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Lua
Objective-C
Pike
Python
Ruby

.Net
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby

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

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

using Google App Engine

yes

User defined Procedures and Functions

SQLScript, R

Triggers

yes

Callbacks using the Google Apps Engine

yes

via event handler

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

none

Sharding

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

none

Multi-source replication using Paxos

Causal Clustering using Raft protocol

available in in Enterprise Version only

yes

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

using Google Cloud Dataflow

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

can be individually decided for each write operation

Immediate Consistency or Eventual Consistency depending on type of query and configuration

Strong Consistency is default for entity lookups and queries within an Entity Group (but can instead be made eventually consistent). Other queries are always eventual consistent.

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

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

typically not needed, however similar functionality with collection joins possible

yes

via ReferenceProperties or Ancestor paths

yes

Relationships in graphs

yes

Transaction concepts

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

Atomicity and isolation are supported for single operations

ACID

Serializable Isolation within Transactions, Read Committed outside of Transactions

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Read/Write Locking

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users can be defined per object

Access rights for users, groups and roles based on Google Cloud Identity and Access Management (IAM)

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...
» more

Neo4j delivers graph technology that has been battle tested for performance and scale...
» more

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...
» more

Typical application scenarios

Internet of Things (IOT), fraud detection applications, recommendation engines, product...
» more

Real-Time Recommendations Master Data Management Identity and Access Management Network...
» more

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.
» more

Neo4j boasts the world's largest graph database ecosystem with more than 140 million...
» 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...
» more

News

This Week in Neo4j: GraphRAG, Testcontainers, Metadata Management, App Dev and more
11 May 2024

Creating the GQL Database Language Standard
7 May 2024

This Week in Neo4j: GraphRAG, Knowledge Graphs, Open Source AI, GraphQL and more
4 May 2024

This Week in Neo4j: Nodes 2024, Data Modelling, Events, Knowledge Graphs and more
27 April 2024

GQL is Here: Your Cypher Queries in a GQL World
26 April 2024

We invite representatives of system vendors to contact us for updating and extending the system information,
and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.