DBMS > Cassandra vs. MariaDB vs. Neo4j vs. NuoDB vs. RisingWave

System Properties Comparison Cassandra vs. MariaDB vs. Neo4j vs. NuoDB vs. RisingWave

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Wide-column store based on ideas of BigTable and DynamoDB

Optimized for write access

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.

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

NuoDB is a webscale distributed database that supports SQL and ACID transactions

A distributed RDBMS for stream processing, wire-compatible with PostgreSQL

Primary database model

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

Document store
Graph DBMS

with OQGraph storage engine
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	93.21
Rank	#13	Overall
	#9	Relational DBMS

Score	44.46
Rank	#23	Overall
	#1	Graph DBMS

Score	0.89
Rank	#198	Overall
	#92	Relational DBMS

Score	0.58
Rank	#242	Overall
	#111	Relational DBMS

Website

cassandra.apache.org

mariadb.com

Site of MariaDB Corporation
mariadb.org

Site of MariaDB Foundation

neo4j.com

www.3ds.com/nuodb-distributed-sql-database

www.risingwave.com/database

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

mariadb.com/kb/en/library

neo4j.com/docs

doc.nuodb.com

docs.risingwave.com/docs/current/intro

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

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

The lead developer Monty Widenius is the original author of MySQL

Neo4j, Inc.

Dassault Systèmes

originally NuoDB, Inc.

RisingWave Labs

Initial release

2008

2009

Fork of MySQL, which was first released in 1995

2007

2013

2022

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

11.3.2, February 2024

5.19, April 2024

1.2, September 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

GPL version 2, commercial enterprise subscription available

Open Source

GPL version3, commercial licenses available

commercial

limited edition free

Open Source

Apache Version 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.

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++

Java, Scala

C++

Rust

Server operating systems

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

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

hosted

Amazon EC2, Windows Azure, SoftLayer
Linux
OS X
Windows

Docker
Linux
macOS

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

Dynamic columns are supported

schema-free and schema-optional

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

Standard SQL-types and JSON

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

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

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

yes

with proprietary extensions

yes

APIs and other access methods

Proprietary protocol

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

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary native API

Bolt protocol
Cypher query language
Java API
Neo4j-OGM

Object Graph Mapper
RESTful HTTP API
Spring Data Neo4j
TinkerPop 3

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC

JDBC
PostgreSQL wire protocol

Supported programming languages

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

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

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

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

Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

PL/SQL compatibility added with version 10.3

yes

User defined Procedures and Functions

Java, SQL

UDFs in Python or Java

Triggers

yes

via event handler

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

several options for horizontal partitioning and Sharding

yes using Neo4j Fabric

data is dynamically stored/cached on the nodes where it is read/written

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

Causal Clustering using Raft protocol

available in in Enterprise Version only

yes

Managed transparently by NuoDB

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

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

not for MyISAM storage engine

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

not for MyISAM storage engine

ACID

tunable commit protocol

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

MVCC

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

not for in-memory storage engine

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

Temporary table

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)

Standard SQL roles/ privileges, Administrative Users

Users and Roles

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

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16 May 2024

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15 May 2024

New Security Feature in Neo4j Aura: Customer Managed Keys
15 May 2024

Safeguarding Elections: How Graph Technology Powers Groundbreaking Research on Political Ads
13 May 2024

This Week in Neo4j: GraphRAG, Testcontainers, Metadata Management, App Dev and more
11 May 2024

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and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.