DBMS > Cassandra vs. EJDB vs. Google Cloud Firestore vs. Hawkular Metrics vs. Neo4j

System Properties Comparison Cassandra vs. EJDB vs. Google Cloud Firestore vs. Hawkular Metrics vs. Neo4j

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)

Cloud Firestore is an auto-scaling document database for storing, syncing, and querying data for mobile and web apps. It offers seamless integration with other Firebase and Google Cloud Platform products.

Hawkular metrics is the metric storage of the Red Hat sponsored Hawkular monitoring system. It is based on Cassandra.

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

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

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	7.85
Rank	#51	Overall
	#8	Document stores

Score	0.00
Rank	#379	Overall
	#40	Time Series DBMS

Score	44.46
Rank	#23	Overall
	#1	Graph DBMS

Website

cassandra.apache.org

github.com/Softmotions/ejdb

firebase.google.com/products/firestore

www.hawkular.org

neo4j.com

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

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

firebase.google.com/docs/firestore

www.hawkular.org/hawkular-metrics/docs/user-guide

neo4j.com/docs

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Softmotions

Google

Community supported by Red Hat

Neo4j, Inc.

Initial release

2008

2012

2017

2014

2007

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

5.19, April 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

GPLv2

commercial

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

GPL version3, commercial licenses available

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

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
OS X
Windows

Linux

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

Data scheme

schema-free

schema-free and schema-optional

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

string, integer, double, bool, date, object_id

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

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

in-process shared library

Android
gRPC (using protocol buffers) API
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

HTTP REST

Bolt protocol
Cypher query language
Java API
Neo4j-OGM

Object Graph Mapper
RESTful HTTP API
Spring Data Neo4j
TinkerPop 3

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

Go
Java
JavaScript
JavaScript (Node.js)
Objective-C
Python

Go
Java
Python
Ruby

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

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes, Firebase Rules & Cloud Functions

yes

User defined Procedures and Functions

Triggers

yes

yes, with Cloud Functions

yes

via Hawkular Alerting

yes

via event handler

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

none

Sharding

based on Cassandra

yes using Neo4j Fabric

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

selectable replication factor

based on Cassandra

Causal Clustering using Raft protocol

available in in Enterprise Version only

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

Using 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

Eventual Consistency

based on Cassandra
Immediate Consistency

based on Cassandra

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

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

typically not needed, however similar functionality with collection joins possible

yes

Relationships in graphs

Transaction concepts

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

Atomicity and isolation are supported for single operations

yes

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.

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. Security Rules for 3rd party authentication using Firebase Auth.

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

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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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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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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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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