DBMS > Cassandra vs. GBase vs. Google Cloud Spanner vs. Neo4j vs. Newts

System Properties Comparison Cassandra vs. GBase vs. Google Cloud Spanner vs. Neo4j vs. Newts

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Wide-column store based on ideas of BigTable and DynamoDB

Optimized for write access

Widely used RDBMS in China, including analytical, transactional, distributed transactional, and cloud-native data warehousing.

A horizontally scalable, globally consistent, relational database service. It is the externalization of the core Google database that runs the biggest aspects of Google, like Ads and Google Play.

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

Time Series DBMS based on Cassandra

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	1.07
Rank	#185	Overall
	#86	Relational DBMS

Score	2.89
Rank	#103	Overall
	#52	Relational DBMS

Score	44.46
Rank	#23	Overall
	#1	Graph DBMS

Score	0.00
Rank	#383	Overall
	#41	Time Series DBMS

Website

cassandra.apache.org

www.gbase.cn

cloud.google.com/spanner

neo4j.com

opennms.github.io/newts

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

cloud.google.com/spanner/docs

neo4j.com/docs

github.com/OpenNMS/newts/wiki

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

General Data Technology Co., Ltd.

Google

Neo4j, Inc.

OpenNMS Group

Initial release

2008

2004

2017

2007

2014

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

GBase 8a, GBase 8s, GBase 8c

5.19, April 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

commercial

Open Source

GPL version3, commercial licenses available

Open Source

Apache 2.0

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, Python

Java, Scala

Java

Server operating systems

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux

hosted

Linux

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

Linux
OS X
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free and schema-optional

schema-free

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

pluggable indexing subsystem, by default Apache Lucene

SQL

Support of SQL

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

Standard with numerous extensions

yes

Query statements complying to ANSI 2011

APIs and other access methods

Proprietary protocol

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

ADO.NET
C API
JDBC
ODBC

gRPC (using protocol buffers) API
JDBC

At present, JDBC supports read-only queries. No support for DDL or DML statements.
RESTful HTTP API

Bolt protocol
Cypher query language
Java API
Neo4j-OGM

Object Graph Mapper
RESTful HTTP API
Spring Data Neo4j
TinkerPop 3

HTTP REST
Java API

Supported programming languages

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

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

Java

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

user defined functions

yes

User defined Procedures and Functions

Triggers

yes

via event handler

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

horizontal partitioning (by range, list and hash) and vertical partitioning

Sharding

yes using Neo4j Fabric

Sharding

based on Cassandra

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

yes

Multi-source replication with 3 replicas for regional instances.

Causal Clustering using Raft protocol

available in in Enterprise Version only

selectable replication factor

based on Cassandra

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

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

Eventual Consistency

based on Cassandra
Immediate Consistency

based on Cassandra

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

by using interleaved tables, this features focuses more on performance improvements than on referential integrity

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

ACID

Strict serializable isolation

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.

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users can be defined per object

yes

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)

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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