DBMS > Cassandra vs. NCache vs. Neo4j vs. Stardog vs. VoltDB

System Properties Comparison Cassandra vs. NCache vs. Neo4j vs. Stardog vs. VoltDB

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Wide-column store based on ideas of BigTable and DynamoDB

Optimized for write access

Open-Source and Enterprise in-memory Key-Value Store

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

Enterprise Knowledge Graph platform and graph DBMS with high availability, high performance reasoning, and virtualization

Distributed In-Memory NewSQL RDBMS

Used for OLTP applications with a high frequency of relatively simple transactions, that can hold all their data in memory

Primary database model

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

Document store
Search engine

Using distributed Lucene

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

Score	101.89
Rank	#12	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	0.94
Rank	#195	Overall
	#29	Key-value stores

Score	44.46
Rank	#23	Overall
	#1	Graph DBMS

Score	2.02
Rank	#123	Overall
	#11	Graph DBMS
	#6	RDF stores

Score	1.44
Rank	#158	Overall
	#73	Relational DBMS

Website

cassandra.apache.org

www.alachisoft.com/ncache

neo4j.com

www.stardog.com

www.voltdb.com

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

www.alachisoft.com/resources/docs

neo4j.com/docs

docs.stardog.com

docs.voltdb.com

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Alachisoft

Neo4j, Inc.

Stardog-Union

VoltDB Inc.

Initial release

2008

2005

2007

2010

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

5.3.3, April 2024

5.20, May 2024

7.3.0, May 2020

11.3, April 2022

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

Enterprise Edition available

Open Source

GPL version3, commercial licenses available

commercial

60-day fully-featured trial license; 1-year fully-featured non-commercial use license for academics/students

Open Source

AGPL for Community Edition, commercial license for Enterprise, AWS, and Pro Editions

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#, .NET, .NET Core, Java

Java, Scala

Java

Java, C++

Server operating systems

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
Windows

Linux

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

Linux
macOS
Windows

Linux
OS X

for development

Data scheme

schema-free

schema-free and schema-optional

schema-free and OWL/RDFS-schema support

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

partial

Supported data types are Lists, Queues, Hashsets, Dictionary and Counter

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

pluggable indexing subsystem, by default Apache Lucene

yes

supports real-time indexing in full-text and geospatial

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

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

SQL-like query syntax and LINQ for searching the cache. Cache Synchronization with SQL Server using SQL dependency.

Yes, compatible with all major SQL variants through dedicated BI/SQL Server

yes

only a subset of SQL 99

APIs and other access methods

Proprietary protocol

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

IDistributedCache
JCache
LINQ
Proprietary native API

Bolt protocol
Cypher query language
Java API
Neo4j-OGM

Object Graph Mapper
RESTful HTTP API
Spring Data Neo4j
TinkerPop 3

GraphQL query language
HTTP API
Jena RDF API
OWL
RDF4J API
Sesame REST HTTP Protocol
SNARL
SPARQL
Spring Data
Stardog Studio
TinkerPop 3

Java API
JDBC
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Supported programming languages

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

.Net
.Net Core
C#
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python
Scala

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

.Net
Clojure
Groovy
Java
JavaScript
Python
Ruby

C#
C++
Erlang

not officially supported
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
PHP
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

support for stored procedures with SQL-Server CLR

yes

User defined Procedures and Functions

user defined functions and aggregates, HTTP Server extensions in Java

Java

Triggers

yes

Notifications

yes

via event handler

yes

via event handlers

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

yes

yes using Neo4j Fabric

none

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

yes, with selectable consistency level

Causal Clustering using Raft protocol

available in in Enterprise Version only

Multi-source replication in HA-Cluster

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

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
Strong Eventual Consistency over WAN with Conflict Resolution using Bridge Topology

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

Immediate Consistency in HA-Cluster

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Relationships in graphs

yes

relationships in graphs

FOREIGN KEY constraints are not supported

Transaction concepts

Support to ensure data integrity after non-atomic manipulations of data

Atomicity and isolation are supported for single operations

optimistic locking and pessimistic locking

ACID

Transactions are executed single-threaded within stored procedures

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Data access is serialized by the server

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

Snapshots and command logging

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

Authentication to access the cache via Active Directory/LDAP (possible roles: user, administrator)

Users, roles and permissions. Pluggable authentication with supported standards (LDAP, Active Directory, Kerberos)

Access rights for users and roles

Users and roles with access to stored procedures

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Apache Cassandra is the leading NoSQL, distributed database management system, well...
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NCache has been the market leader in .NET Distributed Caching since 2005 . NCache...
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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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NCache is 100% .NET/ .NET Core based which fully supports ASP.NET Core Sessions ,...
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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...
» more

NCache enables industries like retail, finance, banking IoT, travel, ecommerce, healthcare...
» more

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...
» more

Bank of America, Citi, Natures Way, Charter Spectrum, Barclays, Henry Schein, GBM,...
» more

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.
» more

Market Leader in .NET Distributed Caching since 2005.
» more

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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NCache Open Source is free on an as-is basis without any support. NCache Enterprise...
» more

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

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