DBMS > CouchDB vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Neo4j vs. RavenDB

System Properties Comparison CouchDB vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Neo4j vs. RavenDB

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

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

Globally distributed, horizontally scalable, multi-model database service

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

Open Source Operational and Transactional Enterprise NoSQL Document Database

Primary database model

Document store

Document store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store
Wide column store

Graph DBMS

Document store

Secondary database models

Spatial DBMS

using the Geocouch extension

Spatial DBMS

Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS
Time Series DBMS

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

Score	9.30
Rank	#45	Overall
	#7	Document stores

Score	29.04
Rank	#27	Overall
	#4	Document stores
	#2	Graph DBMS
	#3	Key-value stores
	#3	Wide column stores

Score	44.46
Rank	#23	Overall
	#1	Graph DBMS

Score	2.92
Rank	#101	Overall
	#18	Document stores

Website

couchdb.apache.org

azure.microsoft.com/services/cosmos-db

neo4j.com

ravendb.net

Technical documentation

docs.couchdb.org/en/stable

learn.microsoft.com/azure/cosmos-db

neo4j.com/docs

ravendb.net/docs

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

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

Microsoft

Neo4j, Inc.

Hibernating Rhinos

Initial release

2005

2014

2007

2010

Current release

3.3.3, December 2023

5.19, April 2024

5.4, July 2022

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

commercial

Open Source

GPL version3, commercial licenses available

Open Source

AGPL version 3, commercial license available

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

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

Erlang

Java, Scala

Server operating systems

Android
BSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

hosted

Linux

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

Linux
macOS
Raspberry Pi
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

schema-free and schema-optional

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

JSON types

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

via views

yes

All properties auto-indexed by default

yes

pluggable indexing subsystem, by default Apache Lucene

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like query language

SQL-like query language (RQL)

APIs and other access methods

RESTful HTTP/JSON API

DocumentDB API
Graph API (Gremlin)
MongoDB API
RESTful HTTP API
Table API

Bolt protocol
Cypher query language
Java API
Neo4j-OGM

Object Graph Mapper
RESTful HTTP API
Spring Data Neo4j
TinkerPop 3

.NET Client API
F# Client API
Go Client API
Java Client API
NodeJS Client API
PHP Client API
Python Client API
RESTful HTTP API

Supported programming languages

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

.Net
C#
Java
JavaScript
JavaScript (Node.js)
MongoDB client drivers written for various programming languages
Python

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

.Net
C#
F#
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

View functions in JavaScript

JavaScript

yes

User defined Procedures and Functions

yes

Triggers

yes

JavaScript

yes

via event handler

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

improved architecture with release 2.0

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

yes using Neo4j Fabric

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

Causal Clustering using Raft protocol

available in in Enterprise Version only

Multi-source replication

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

with Hadoop integration

Integration with Hadoop/HDInsight on Azure*

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency

Bounded Staleness
Consistent Prefix
Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Consistency level configurable on request level
Session Consistency

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

Default ACID transactions on the local node (eventually consistent across the cluster). Atomic operations with cluster-wide ACID transactions. Eventual consistency for indexes and full-text search indexes.

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Relationships in graphs

Transaction concepts

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

atomic operations within a single document possible

Multi-item ACID transactions with snapshot isolation within a partition

ACID

ACID, Cluster-wide transaction available

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.

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users can be defined per database

Access rights can be defined down to the item level

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

Authorization levels configured per client per database

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

Neo4j is the market leader, graph database category creator, and the most widely...
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Typical application scenarios

Real-Time Recommendations Master Data Management Identity and Access Management Network...
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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...
» more

Licensing and pricing models

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

News

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7 May 2024

This Week in Neo4j: GraphRAG, Knowledge Graphs, Open Source AI, GraphQL and more
4 May 2024

This Week in Neo4j: Nodes 2024, Data Modelling, Events, Knowledge Graphs and more
27 April 2024

GQL is Here: Your Cypher Queries in a GQL World
26 April 2024

GQL: The ISO Standard for Graphs Has Arrived
25 April 2024

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and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.