DBMS > Cassandra vs. H2GIS vs. Microsoft Access vs. Neo4j vs. TinkerGraph

System Properties Comparison Cassandra vs. H2GIS vs. Microsoft Access vs. Neo4j vs. TinkerGraph

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Wide-column store based on ideas of BigTable and DynamoDB

Optimized for write access

Spatial extension of H2

Microsoft Access combines a backend RDBMS (JET / ACE Engine) with a GUI frontend for data manipulation and queries.

The Access frontend is often used for accessing other datasources (DBMS, Excel, etc.)

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

A lightweight, in-memory graph engine that serves as a reference implementation of the TinkerPop3 API

Primary database model

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

Relational DBMS

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

Score	101.89
Rank	#12	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	0.00
Rank	#383	Overall
	#7	Spatial DBMS

Score	104.92
Rank	#11	Overall
	#8	Relational DBMS

Score	44.46
Rank	#23	Overall
	#1	Graph DBMS

Score	0.08
Rank	#348	Overall
	#35	Graph DBMS

Website

cassandra.apache.org

www.h2gis.org

www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/access

neo4j.com

tinkerpop.apache.org/docs/current/reference/#tinkergraph-gremlin

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

www.h2gis.org/docs/home

developer.microsoft.com/en-us/access

neo4j.com/docs

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

CNRS

Microsoft

Neo4j, Inc.

Initial release

2008

2013

1992

2007

2009

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

1902 (16.0.11328.20222), March 2019

5.19, April 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

LGPL 3.0

commercial

Bundled with Microsoft Office

Open Source

GPL version3, commercial licenses available

Open Source

Apache 2.0

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.

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

Implementation language

Java

C++

Java, Scala

Java

Server operating systems

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

Windows

Not a real database server, but making use of DLLs

Linux

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

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)

yes

but not compliant to any SQL standard

APIs and other access methods

Proprietary protocol

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

ADO.NET
DAO
ODBC
OLE DB

Bolt protocol
Cypher query language
Java API
Neo4j-OGM

Object Graph Mapper
RESTful HTTP API
Spring Data Neo4j
TinkerPop 3

TinkerPop 3

Supported programming languages

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

Java

C
C#
C++
Delphi
Java (JDBC-ODBC)
VBA
Visual Basic.NET

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

Groovy
Java

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

based on H2

yes

since Access 2010 using the ACE-engine

yes

User defined Procedures and Functions

Triggers

yes

since Access 2010 using the ACE-engine

yes

via event handler

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

none

yes using Neo4j Fabric

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

yes

based on H2

none

Causal Clustering using Raft protocol

available in in Enterprise Version only

none

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

none

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

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

but no files for transaction logging

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

yes, multi-version concurrency control (MVCC)

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

but no files for transaction logging

yes

optional

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

yes

based on H2

a simple user-level security was built in till version Access 2003

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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