DBMS > Apache Cassandra vs. Heroic vs. IBM Db2 warehouse vs. Neo4j vs. Sphinx

System Properties Comparison Apache Cassandra vs. Heroic vs. IBM Db2 warehouse vs. Neo4j vs. Sphinx

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Wide-column store based on ideas of BigTable and DynamoDB

Optimized for write access

Time Series DBMS built at Spotify based on Cassandra or Google Cloud Bigtable, and ElasticSearch

Cloud-based data warehousing service

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

Open source search engine for searching in data from different sources, e.g. relational databases

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	98.94
Rank	#11	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	0.13
Rank	#335	Overall
	#29	Time Series DBMS

Score	1.26
Rank	#162	Overall
	#73	Relational DBMS

Score	42.68
Rank	#21	Overall
	#1	Graph DBMS

Score	5.97
Rank	#56	Overall
	#5	Search engines

Website

cassandra.apache.org

github.com/spotify/heroic

www.ibm.com/products/db2/warehouse

neo4j.com

sphinxsearch.com

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

spotify.github.io/heroic

neo4j.com/docs

sphinxsearch.com/docs

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Spotify

IBM

Neo4j, Inc.

Sphinx Technologies Inc.

Initial release

2008

2014

2007

2001

Current release

5.0-rc1, July 2024

5.23, August 2024

3.5.1, February 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

Apache 2.0

commercial

Open Source

GPL version3, commercial licenses available

Open Source

GPL version 2, commercial licence 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

C++

Server operating systems

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

hosted

Linux

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

FreeBSD
Linux
NetBSD
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

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.

Import/export of XML data possible

Secondary indexes

restricted

only equality queries, not always the best performing solution

yes

via Elasticsearch

yes

pluggable indexing subsystem, by default Apache Lucene

yes

full-text index on all search fields

SQL

Support of SQL

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

yes

SQL-like query language (SphinxQL)

APIs and other access methods

Proprietary protocol

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

HQL (Heroic Query Language, a JSON-based language)
HTTP API

.NET Client API
JDBC
ODBC
OLE DB

Bolt protocol
Cypher query language
Java API
Neo4j-OGM

Object Graph Mapper
RESTful HTTP API
Spring Data Neo4j
TinkerPop 3

Proprietary protocol

Supported programming languages

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Ruby

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

C++

unofficial client library
Java
Perl

unofficial client library
PHP
Python
Ruby

unofficial client library

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

PL/SQL, SQL PL

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"

Sharding

yes using Neo4j Fabric

Sharding

Partitioning is done manually, search queries against distributed index is supported

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

yes

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

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Immediate Consistency

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

Foreign keys

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

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

The original contents of fields are not stored in the Sphinx index.

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

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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...
» more

Neo4j delivers graph technology that has been battle tested for performance and scale...
» more

Competitive advantages

No single point of failure ensures 100% availability . Operational simplicity for...
» more

Neo4j is the market leader, graph database category creator, and the most widely...
» more

Typical application scenarios

Internet of Things (IOT), fraud detection applications, recommendation engines, product...
» more

Real-Time Recommendations Master Data Management Identity and Access Management Network...
» more

Key customers

Apple, Netflix, Uber, ING,, Intuit,Fidelity, NY Times, Outbrain, BazaarVoice, Best...
» more

Over 800 commercial customers and over 4300 startups use Neo4j. Flagship customers...
» more

Market metrics

Apache Cassandra is used by 40% of the Fortune 100.
» more

Neo4j boasts the world's largest graph database ecosystem with more than 140 million...
» more

Licensing and pricing models

Apache licenseÂ Pricing for commercial distributions provided by DataStax and available...
» more

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

News

DataStax Named a Leader in The Forrester Wave™: Vector Databases, Q3 2024
23 September 2024

How to Build a Notion Clone with Astra DB and Mongoose
20 September 2024

How to Monitor DataStax-Powered RAG Applications with Fiddler
19 September 2024

How Knowledge Graph RAG Boosts LLM Results
18 September 2024

How to Chunk Text in JavaScript for Your RAG Application
18 September 2024

Elevate Fraud Detection With Neo4j on AWS: Uncover Hidden Patterns and Enhance Accuracy
20 September 2024

The Ethics of Generative AI: Understanding the Principles and Risks
18 September 2024

GraphSummit Europe 2024: Actionable Insights From Industry Leaders and Innovators
18 September 2024

This Week in Neo4j: Knowledge Graph, Data Loading, Olympics, CSV and more
7 September 2024

Neo4j Expands Cloud Database Capabilities to Power Enterprise-Scale Graph Deployments
4 September 2024

We invite representatives of system vendors to contact us for updating and extending the system information,
and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.