DBMS > Cassandra vs. MariaDB vs. Neo4j vs. OpenSearch

System Properties Comparison Cassandra vs. MariaDB vs. Neo4j vs. OpenSearch

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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

A distributed, RESTful search and analytics engine forked from Elasticsearch and based on Apache Lucene

Primary database model

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

Document store
Graph DBMS

with OQGraph storage engine
Spatial DBMS

Vector 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	16.36
Rank	#37	Overall
	#4	Search engines

Website

cassandra.apache.org

mariadb.com

Site of MariaDB Corporation
mariadb.org

Site of MariaDB Foundation

neo4j.com

github.com/opensearch-project
opensearch.org

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

mariadb.com/kb/en/library

neo4j.com/docs

opensearch.org/docs/latest

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.

Amazon Web Services

Initial release

2008

2009

Fork of MySQL, which was first released in 1995

2007

2021

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

11.3.2, February 2024

5.19, April 2024

2.5.0, January 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

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.

Aiven for OpenSearch: Fully managed open source search and analytics suite. Out-of-the-box integrations get you up and running in a couple of clicks.
STACKIT OpenSearch offers OpenSearch in a managed version in enterprise grade, 100% GDPR-compliant, for a wide range of applications like analytics, website search, offering scalability and fast data access.

Implementation language

Java

C and C++

Java, Scala

Java

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

All OS with a Java VM

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

Dynamic columns are supported

schema-free and schema-optional

schema-free

Flexible type definitions. Once a type is defined, it is persistent

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

yes

All search fields are automatically indexed

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

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

Java API
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

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

Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby

Elasticsearch client

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

PL/SQL compatibility added with version 10.3

yes

User defined Procedures and Functions

yes

Triggers

yes

via event handler

yes

by using the 'percolation' feature

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

Sharding

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

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

Eventual Consistency

Synchronous doc based replication. Get by ID may show delays up to 1 sec. Configurable write consistency: one, quorum, all

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

not for MyISAM storage engine

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

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

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...
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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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OpenSearch is a highly scalable and extensible open-source software suite for search,...
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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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Distributed as fully open source under Apache License, Version 2.0 (ALv2), OpenSearch...
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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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The OpenSearch platform is used across a broad range of search , analytics, and observability...
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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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The OpenSearch Project offers open source software licensed under Apache License...
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