DBMS > Apache Impala vs. CouchDB vs. mSQL vs. Neo4j vs. Oracle

System Properties Comparison Apache Impala vs. CouchDB vs. mSQL vs. Neo4j vs. Oracle

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Analytic DBMS for Hadoop

A native JSON - document store inspired by Lotus Notes, scalable from globally distributed server-clusters down to mobile phones.

mSQL (Mini SQL) is a simple and lightweight RDBMS

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

Widely used RDBMS

Primary database model

Secondary database models

Document store

Spatial DBMS

using the Geocouch extension

Document store
Graph DBMS

with Oracle Spatial and Graph
RDF store

with Oracle Spatial and Graph
Spatial DBMS

with Oracle Spatial and Graph
Vector DBMS

since Oracle 23

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

Score	13.77
Rank	#40	Overall
	#24	Relational DBMS

Score	9.30
Rank	#45	Overall
	#7	Document stores

Score	1.27
Rank	#167	Overall
	#77	Relational DBMS

Score	44.46
Rank	#23	Overall
	#1	Graph DBMS

Score	1236.29
Rank	#1	Overall
	#1	Relational DBMS

Website

impala.apache.org

couchdb.apache.org

hughestech.com.au/products/msql

neo4j.com

www.oracle.com/database

Technical documentation

impala.apache.org/impala-docs.html

docs.couchdb.org/en/stable

neo4j.com/docs

docs.oracle.com/en/database

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top-level project, originally developed by Cloudera

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top-level project, originally developed by Damien Katz, a former Lotus Notes developer

Hughes Technologies

Neo4j, Inc.

Oracle

Initial release

2013

2005

1994

2007

1980

Current release

4.1.0, June 2022

3.3.3, December 2023

4.4, October 2021

5.19, April 2024

23c, September 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache Version 2

Open Source

Apache version 2

commercial

free licenses can be provided

Open Source

GPL version3, commercial licenses available

commercial

restricted free version is available

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.

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

Implementation language

C++

Erlang

Java, Scala

C and C++

Server operating systems

Linux

Android
BSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
Solaris SPARC/x86
Windows

Linux

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

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows
z/OS

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

yes

schema-free and schema-optional

yes

Schemaless in JSON and XML columns

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

yes

via views

yes

pluggable indexing subsystem, by default Apache Lucene

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like DML and DDL statements

A subset of ANSI SQL is implemented

no subqueries, aggregate functions, views, foreign keys, triggers

yes

with proprietary extensions

APIs and other access methods

JDBC
ODBC

RESTful HTTP/JSON API

JDBC
ODBC

Bolt protocol
Cypher query language
Java API
Neo4j-OGM

Object Graph Mapper
RESTful HTTP API
Spring Data Neo4j
TinkerPop 3

JDBC
ODBC
ODP.NET
Oracle Call Interface (OCI)

Supported programming languages

All languages supporting JDBC/ODBC

C
C#
ColdFusion
Erlang
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Lisp
Lua
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
PL/SQL
Python
Ruby
Smalltalk

C
C++
Delphi
Java
Perl
PHP
Tcl

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

C
C#
C++
Clojure
Cobol
Delphi
Eiffel
Erlang
Fortran
Groovy
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Lisp
Objective C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Scala
Tcl
Visual Basic

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

user defined functions and integration of map-reduce

View functions in JavaScript

yes

User defined Procedures and Functions

PL/SQL

also stored procedures in Java possible

Triggers

yes

via event handler

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

improved architecture with release 2.0

none

yes using Neo4j Fabric

Sharding, horizontal partitioning

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication factor

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

none

Causal Clustering using Raft protocol

available in in Enterprise Version only

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

query execution via MapReduce

yes

can be realized in PL/SQL

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency

none

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

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Relationships in graphs

yes

Transaction concepts

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

atomic operations within a single document possible

ACID

isolation level can be parameterized

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

strategy: optimistic locking

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

In-memory capabilities

Is there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.

yes

Version 12c introduced the new option 'Oracle Database In-Memory'

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users, groups and roles

based on Apache Sentry and Kerberos

Access rights for users can be defined per database

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

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Neo4j delivers graph technology that has been battle tested for performance and scale...
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Competitive advantages

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Typical application scenarios

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Key customers

Over 800 commercial customers and over 4300 startups use Neo4j. Flagship customers...
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Market metrics

Neo4j boasts the world's largest graph database ecosystem with more than 140 million...
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Licensing and pricing models

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