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DBMS > Cassandra vs. MariaDB vs. Neo4j vs. QuestDB

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

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines
NameCassandra  Xexclude from comparisonMariaDB  Xexclude from comparisonNeo4j  Xexclude from comparisonQuestDB  Xexclude from comparison
DescriptionWide-column store based on ideas of BigTable and DynamoDB infoOptimized for write accessMySQL 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 offeringsA high performance open source SQL database for time series data
Primary database modelWide column storeRelational DBMSGraph DBMSTime Series DBMS
Secondary database modelsVector DBMS infostarting with release V5Document store
Graph DBMS infowith OQGraph storage engine
Spatial DBMS
Relational DBMS
DB-Engines Ranking infomeasures the popularity of database management systemsranking trend
Trend Chart
Score103.86
Rank#12  Overall
#1  Wide column stores
Score93.81
Rank#13  Overall
#9  Relational DBMS
Score44.47
Rank#23  Overall
#1  Graph DBMS
Score2.48
Rank#115  Overall
#9  Time Series DBMS
Websitecassandra.apache.orgmariadb.com infoSite of MariaDB Corporation
mariadb.org infoSite of MariaDB Foundation
neo4j.comquestdb.io
Technical documentationcassandra.apache.org/­doc/­latestmariadb.com/­kb/­en/­libraryneo4j.com/­docsquestdb.io/­docs
DeveloperApache Software Foundation infoApache top level project, originally developped by FacebookMariaDB Corporation Ab (MariaDB Enterprise),
MariaDB Foundation (community MariaDB Server) infoThe lead developer Monty Widenius is the original author of MySQL
Neo4j, Inc.QuestDB Technology Inc
Initial release20082009 infoFork of MySQL, which was first released in 199520072014
Current release4.1.3, July 202311.3.2, February 20245.18.1, March 2024
License infoCommercial or Open SourceOpen Source infoApache version 2Open Source infoGPL version 2, commercial enterprise subscription availableOpen Source infoGPL version3, commercial licenses availableOpen Source infoApache 2.0
Cloud-based only infoOnly available as a cloud servicenononono
DBaaS offerings (sponsored links) infoDatabase 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 languageJavaC and C++Java, ScalaJava (Zero-GC), C++, Rust
Server operating systemsBSD
Linux
OS X
Windows
FreeBSD
Linux
Solaris
Windows infoColumnStore storage engine not available on Windows
Linux infoCan also be used server-less as embedded Java database.
OS X
Solaris
Windows
Linux
macOS
Windows
Data schemeschema-freeyes infoDynamic columns are supportedschema-free and schema-optionalyes infoschema-free via InfluxDB Line Protocol
Typing infopredefined data types such as float or dateyesyesyesyes
XML support infoSome form of processing data in XML format, e.g. support for XML data structures, and/or support for XPath, XQuery or XSLT.noyesno
Secondary indexesrestricted infoonly equality queries, not always the best performing solutionyesyes infopluggable indexing subsystem, by default Apache Luceneno
SQL infoSupport of SQLSQL-like SELECT, DML and DDL statements (CQL)yes infowith proprietary extensionsnoSQL with time-series extensions
APIs and other access methodsProprietary protocol infoCQL (Cassandra Query Language, an SQL-like language)
Thrift
ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary native API
Bolt protocol
Cypher query language
Java API
Neo4j-OGM infoObject Graph Mapper
RESTful HTTP API
Spring Data Neo4j
TinkerPop 3
HTTP REST
InfluxDB Line Protocol (TCP/UDP)
JDBC
PostgreSQL wire protocol
Supported programming languagesC#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript infoNode.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
C infoPostgreSQL driver
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python
Rust infoover HTTP
Server-side scripts infoStored proceduresnoyes infoPL/SQL compatibility added with version 10.3yes infoUser defined Procedures and Functionsno
Triggersyesyesyes infovia event handlerno
Partitioning methods infoMethods for storing different data on different nodesSharding infono "single point of failure"several options for horizontal partitioning and Shardingyes using Neo4j Fabrichorizontal partitioning (by timestamps)
Replication methods infoMethods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodesselectable replication factor infoRepresentation of geographical distribution of servers is possibleMulti-source replication
Source-replica replication
Causal Clustering using Raft protocol infoavailable in in Enterprise Version onlySource-replica replication with eventual consistency
MapReduce infoOffers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methodsyesnonono
Consistency concepts infoMethods to ensure consistency in a distributed systemEventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency infocan be individually decided for each write operation
Immediate ConsistencyCausal and Eventual Consistency configurable in Causal Cluster setup
Immediate Consistency in stand-alone mode
Immediate Consistency
Foreign keys infoReferential integritynoyes infonot for MyISAM storage engineyes infoRelationships in graphsno
Transaction concepts infoSupport to ensure data integrity after non-atomic manipulations of datano infoAtomicity and isolation are supported for single operationsACID infonot for MyISAM storage engineACIDACID for single-table writes
Concurrency infoSupport for concurrent manipulation of datayesyesyesyes
Durability infoSupport for making data persistentyesyes infonot for in-memory storage engineyesyes
In-memory capabilities infoIs there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.noyes infowith MEMORY storage engineyes infothrough memory mapped files
User concepts infoAccess controlAccess rights for users can be defined per objectfine grained access rights according to SQL-standardUsers, roles and permissions. Pluggable authentication with supported standards (LDAP, Active Directory, Kerberos)
More information provided by the system vendor
CassandraMariaDBNeo4jQuestDB
Specific characteristicsApache 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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Relational model with native time series support Column-based storage and time partitioned...
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Competitive advantagesNo 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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High ingestion throughput: peak of 4M rows/sec (TSBS Benchmark) Code optimizations...
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Typical application scenariosInternet 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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Financial tick data Industrial IoT Application Metrics Monitoring
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Key customersApple, 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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Banks & Hedge funds, Yahoo, OKX, Airbus, Aquis Exchange, Net App, Cloudera, Airtel,...
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Market metricsCassandra 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 modelsApache license  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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Open source Apache 2.0 QuestDB Enterprise QuestDB Cloud
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