DBMS > Cassandra vs. Elasticsearch vs. Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs. Neo4j vs. SAP IQ

System Properties Comparison Cassandra vs. Elasticsearch vs. Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs. Neo4j vs. SAP IQ

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Wide-column store based on ideas of BigTable and DynamoDB

Optimized for write access

A distributed, RESTful modern search and analytics engine based on Apache Lucene

Elasticsearch lets you perform and combine many types of searches such as structured, unstructured, geo, and metric

Database as a Service offering with high compatibility to Microsoft SQL Server

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

Columnar RDBMS optimized for Big Data analytics

Primary database model

column-oriented

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

Document store
Spatial DBMS
Vector DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS
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	135.35
Rank	#7	Overall
	#1	Search engines

Score	77.99
Rank	#16	Overall
	#11	Relational DBMS

Score	44.46
Rank	#23	Overall
	#1	Graph DBMS

Score	2.75
Rank	#104	Overall
	#53	Relational DBMS

Website

cassandra.apache.org

www.elastic.co/elasticsearch

azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/azure-sql/database

neo4j.com

www.sap.com/products/technology-platform/sybase-iq-big-data-management.html

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/index.html

docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-sql

neo4j.com/docs

help.sap.com/docs/SAP_IQ

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Elastic

Microsoft

Neo4j, Inc.

SAP, formerly Sybase

Initial release

2008

2010

2007

1994

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

8.6, January 2023

V12

5.19, April 2024

16.1 SPS04, April 2019

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

Elastic License

commercial

Open Source

GPL version3, commercial licenses available

commercial

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

C++

Java, Scala

Server operating systems

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

All OS with a Java VM

hosted

Linux

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

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
Solaris
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

Flexible type definitions. Once a type is defined, it is persistent

yes

schema-free and schema-optional

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.

yes

Secondary indexes

restricted

only equality queries, not always the best performing solution

yes

All search fields are automatically indexed

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

yes

APIs and other access methods

Proprietary protocol

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

Java API
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC

Bolt protocol
Cypher query language
Java API
Neo4j-OGM

Object Graph Mapper
RESTful HTTP API
Spring Data Neo4j
TinkerPop 3

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
RESTful HTTP API

Supported programming languages

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

.Net
Groovy
Community Contributed Clients
Java
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

.Net
C#
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby

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

C
C#
C++
Java
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

Transact SQL

yes

User defined Procedures and Functions

yes

Triggers

yes

by using the 'percolation' feature

yes

via event handler

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

Sharding

yes using Neo4j Fabric

shared disk or shared nothing architectures with SAP IQ Multiplexer

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

yes

yes, with always 3 replicas available

Causal Clustering using Raft protocol

available in in Enterprise Version only

SAP/Sybase Replication Server

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

ES-Hadoop Connector

Hadoop integration

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

can be individually decided for each write operation

Eventual Consistency

Synchronous doc based replication. Get by ID may show delays up to 1 sec. Configurable write consistency: one, quorum, all

Immediate 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

yes

Transaction concepts

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

Atomicity and isolation are supported for single operations

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

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.

Memcached and Redis integration

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users can be defined per object

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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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