DBMS > ClickHouse vs. FoundationDB vs. Neo4j vs. RDF4J vs. SurrealDB

System Properties Comparison ClickHouse vs. FoundationDB vs. Neo4j vs. RDF4J vs. SurrealDB

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Created as commercial project in 2013, FoundationDB has been acquired by Apple in March 2015 and was withdrawn from the market. As a consequence, the product was removed from the DB-Engines ranking. In April 2018, Apple open-sourced FoundationDB and it therefore reappears in the ranking.

Description

A high-performance, column-oriented SQL DBMS for online analytical processing (OLAP) that uses all available system resources to their full potential to process each analytical query as fast as possible. It is available as both an open-source software and a cloud offering.

Ordered key-value store. Core features are complimented by layers.

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

RDF4J is a Java framework for processing RDF data, supporting both memory-based and a disk-based storage.

A fully ACID transactional, developer-friendly, multi-model DBMS

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Document store

supported via specific layer
Key-value store
Relational DBMS

supported via specific SQL-layer

Graph DBMS

RDF store

Document store
Graph DBMS

Secondary database models

Time Series DBMS

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

Score	15.88
Rank	#37	Overall
	#22	Relational DBMS

Score	0.97
Rank	#191	Overall
	#32	Document stores
	#28	Key-value stores
	#87	Relational DBMS

Score	42.68
Rank	#21	Overall
	#1	Graph DBMS

Score	0.72
Rank	#222	Overall
	#9	RDF stores

Score	1.11
Rank	#174	Overall
	#30	Document stores
	#17	Graph DBMS

Website

clickhouse.com

github.com/apple/foundationdb

neo4j.com

rdf4j.org

surrealdb.com

Technical documentation

clickhouse.com/docs

apple.github.io/foundationdb

neo4j.com/docs

rdf4j.org/documentation

surrealdb.com/docs

Developer

Clickhouse Inc.

FoundationDB

Neo4j, Inc.

Since 2016 officially forked into an Eclipse project, former developer was Aduna Software.

SurrealDB Ltd

Initial release

2016

2013

2007

2004

2022

Current release

v24.6.2.17-stable, July 2024

6.2.28, November 2020

5.23, August 2024

v1.5.0, May 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

GPL version3, commercial licenses available

Open Source

Eclipse Distribution License (EDL), v1.0.

Open Source

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.

DoubleCloud: Fully managed ClickHouse alongside best-in-class managed open-source services to build analytics at scale.
ClickHouse Cloud: Get the performance you love from open source ClickHouse in a serverless offering that takes care of the details so you can spend more time getting insight out of the fastest database on earth.

Neo4j Aura: Neo4j’s fully managed cloud service: The zero-admin, always-on graph database for cloud developers.

Implementation language

C++

Java, Scala

Java

Rust

Server operating systems

FreeBSD
Linux
macOS

Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux

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

Linux
OS X
Unix
Windows

Linux
macOS
Windows

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

some layers support schemas

schema-free and schema-optional

yes

RDF Schemas

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

some layers support typing

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.

Secondary indexes

yes

pluggable indexing subsystem, by default Apache Lucene

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

Close to ANSI SQL (SQL/JSON + extensions)

supported in specific SQL layer only

SQL-like query language

APIs and other access methods

gRPC
HTTP REST
JDBC
MySQL wire protocol
ODBC
PostgreSQL wire protocol
Proprietary protocol

Bolt protocol
Cypher query language
Java API
Neo4j-OGM

Object Graph Mapper
RESTful HTTP API
Spring Data Neo4j
TinkerPop 3

Java API
RIO

RDF Input/Output
Sail API
SeRQL

Sesame RDF Query Language
Sesame REST HTTP Protocol
SPARQL

GraphQL
RESTful HTTP API
WebSocket

Supported programming languages

3rd party library
C++
Elixir

3rd party library
Go

3rd party library
Java

3rd party library
JavaScript (Node.js)

3rd party library
Kotlin

3rd party library
Nim

3rd party library
Perl

3rd party library
PHP

3rd party library
Python

3rd party library
R

3rd party library
Ruby

3rd party library
Rust
Scala

3rd party library

.Net
C
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
PHP
Python
Ruby
Swift

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

Java
PHP
Python

Deno
Go
JavaScript (Node.js)
Rust

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

in SQL-layer only

yes

User defined Procedures and Functions

yes

Triggers

yes

via event handler

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

key based and custom

Sharding

yes using Neo4j Fabric

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Asynchronous and synchronous physical replication; geographically distributed replicas; support for object storages.

yes

Causal Clustering using Raft protocol

available in in Enterprise Version only

none

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Linearizable consistency

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

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

in SQL-layer only

yes

Relationships in graphs

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

Isolation support depends on the API used

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

in-memory storage is supported as well

yes

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 and roles. Column and row based policies. Quotas and resource limits. Pluggable authentication with LDAP and Kerberos. Password based, X.509 certificate, and SSH key authentication.

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

yes, based on authentication and database rules

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

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Key customers

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Market metrics

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Licensing and pricing models

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