DBMS > Cassandra vs. H2 vs. MariaDB vs. NebulaGraph vs. Neo4j

System Properties Comparison Cassandra vs. H2 vs. MariaDB vs. NebulaGraph vs. Neo4j

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Wide-column store based on ideas of BigTable and DynamoDB

Optimized for write access

Full-featured RDBMS with a small footprint, either embedded into a Java application or used as a database server.

MySQL application compatible open source RDBMS, enhanced with high availability, security, interoperability and performance capabilities. MariaDB ColumnStore provides a column-oriented storage engine and MariaDB Xpand supports distributed SQL.

A distributed, linear scalable, high perfomant Graph DBMS

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

Primary database model

Wide column store

Relational DBMS

Graph DBMS

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

Spatial DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS

with OQGraph storage engine
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	98.83
Rank	#12	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	8.33
Rank	#46	Overall
	#30	Relational DBMS

Score	91.04
Rank	#13	Overall
	#9	Relational DBMS

Score	2.23
Rank	#116	Overall
	#10	Graph DBMS

Score	44.89
Rank	#21	Overall
	#1	Graph DBMS

Website

cassandra.apache.org

www.h2database.com

mariadb.com

Site of MariaDB Corporation
mariadb.org

Site of MariaDB Foundation

github.com/vesoft-inc/nebula
www.nebula-graph.io

neo4j.com

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

www.h2database.com/html/main.html

mariadb.com/kb/en/library

docs.nebula-graph.io

neo4j.com/docs

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Thomas Mueller

MariaDB Corporation Ab (MariaDB Enterprise),
MariaDB Foundation (community MariaDB Server)

The lead developer Monty Widenius is the original author of MySQL

Vesoft Inc.

Neo4j, Inc.

Initial release

2008

2005

2009

Fork of MySQL, which was first released in 1995

2019

2007

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

2.2.220, July 2023

11.3.2, February 2024

5.20, May 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

dual-licence (Mozilla public license, Eclipse public license)

Open Source

GPL version 2, commercial enterprise subscription available

Open Source

Apache Version 2.0 + Common Clause 1.0

Open Source

GPL version3, commercial licenses available

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud 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.

STACKIT MariaDB offers MariaDB in a fully managed version in enterprise grade, 100% GDPR-compliant.

Neo4j Aura: Neo4j’s fully managed cloud service: The zero-admin, always-on graph database for cloud developers.

Implementation language

Java

C and C++

C++

Java, Scala

Server operating systems

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

All OS with a Java VM

FreeBSD
Linux
Solaris
Windows

ColumnStore storage engine not available on Windows

Linux

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

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

Dynamic columns are supported

Strong typed schema

schema-free and schema-optional

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

Nebula Graph internally uses the Key-Value store RocksDB for persistency. The vertices, edges, and their properties are stored as Key while their values are stored as Value. The primary indexes are per Key and secondary indexes are per Value.

yes

pluggable indexing subsystem, by default Apache Lucene

SQL

Support of SQL

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

yes

with proprietary extensions

SQL-like query language

APIs and other access methods

Proprietary protocol

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

JDBC
ODBC

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary native API

Browser interface
console (shell)
Cypher Query Language
GO Object Graph Mapper
Java Object Graph Mapper
NGBatis

ORM framework for NebulaGraph and Spring-Boot
Proprietary native API
Python Object Graph Mapper
Query language nGQL

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

Java

Ada
C
C#
C++
D
Eiffel
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl

.Net
C++
Go
Java
PHP
Python

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

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

Java Stored Procedures and User-Defined Functions

yes

PL/SQL compatibility added with version 10.3

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"

none

several options for horizontal partitioning and Sharding

Sharding

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

With clustering: 2 database servers on different computers operate on identical copies of a database

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

Causal Clustering using Raft protocol

available in in Enterprise Version only

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

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

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

not for MyISAM storage engine

yes

Relationships in graphs

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

not for MyISAM storage engine

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

yes, multi-version concurrency control (MVCC)

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

not for in-memory storage engine

yes

using RocksDB

yes

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

with MEMORY storage engine

yes

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users can be defined per object

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Role-based access control

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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MariaDB is the most powerful open source relational database – modern SQL and JSON...
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NebulaGraph is a truly distributed, linearly scalable, lightning-fast graph database,...
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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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MariaDB Servers have many features unavailable in other open source relational databases....
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NebulaGraph boasts the world's only graph database solution that is able to host...
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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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Web, SaaS and Cloud operational applications that require high availability, scalability...
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Social networking Fraud detection Knowledge graph Data warehouse management Anti...
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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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Deutsche Bank, DBS Bank, Nasdaq, Red Hat, ServiceNow, Verizon and Walgreens Featured...
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Companies from a variety of industries have implemented NebulaGraph Database in production,...
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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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MariaDB is the default database in the LAMP stack supplied by Red Hat and SUSE Linux,...
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At our very early stage, NebulaGraph has already received over 10,000 stars on GitHub...
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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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MariaDB plc subscriptions cover our free, open source database, Community Server,...
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NebulaGraph is open source and free to use under Apache 2.0 license.
» more

GPL v3 license that can be used all the places where you might use MySQL. Neo4j Commercial...
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