DBMS > CouchDB vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. Neo4j vs. SAP IQ vs. TigerGraph

System Properties Comparison CouchDB vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. Neo4j vs. SAP IQ vs. TigerGraph

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.

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

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

Columnar RDBMS optimized for Big Data analytics

A complete, distributed, parallel graph computing platform supporting web-scale data analytics in real-time

Primary database model

column-oriented

Secondary database models

Spatial DBMS

using the Geocouch extension

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	9.30
Rank	#45	Overall
	#7	Document stores

Score	824.29
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	44.46
Rank	#23	Overall
	#1	Graph DBMS

Score	2.75
Rank	#104	Overall
	#53	Relational DBMS

Score	1.83
Rank	#139	Overall
	#13	Graph DBMS

Website

couchdb.apache.org

www.microsoft.com/en-us/sql-server

neo4j.com

www.sap.com/products/technology-platform/sybase-iq-big-data-management.html

www.tigergraph.com

Technical documentation

docs.couchdb.org/en/stable

learn.microsoft.com/en-US/sql/sql-server

neo4j.com/docs

help.sap.com/docs/SAP_IQ

docs.tigergraph.com

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

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

Microsoft

Neo4j, Inc.

SAP, formerly Sybase

Initial release

2005

1989

2007

1994

2017

Current release

3.3.3, December 2023

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

5.19, April 2024

16.1 SPS04, April 2019

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

commercial

restricted free version is available

Open Source

GPL version3, commercial licenses available

commercial

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

Erlang

C++

Java, Scala

C++

Server operating systems

Android
BSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Linux
Windows

Linux

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

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
Solaris
Windows

Linux

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free and schema-optional

yes

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

yes

SQL-like query language (GSQL)

APIs and other access methods

RESTful HTTP/JSON API

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
OLE DB
Tabular Data Stream (TDS)

Bolt protocol
Cypher query language
Java API
Neo4j-OGM

Object Graph Mapper
RESTful HTTP API
Spring Data Neo4j
TinkerPop 3

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
RESTful HTTP API

GSQL (TigerGraph Query Language)
Kafka
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Supported programming languages

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

C#
C++
Delphi
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Visual Basic

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

C
C#
C++
Java
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

C++
Java

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

View functions in JavaScript

Transact SQL, .NET languages, R, Python and (with SQL Server 2019) Java

yes

User defined Procedures and Functions

yes

Triggers

yes

via event handler

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

improved architecture with release 2.0

tables can be distributed across several files (horizontal partitioning); sharding through federation

yes using Neo4j Fabric

shared disk or shared nothing architectures with SAP IQ Multiplexer

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

Causal Clustering using Raft protocol

available in in Enterprise Version only

SAP/Sybase Replication Server

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

Hadoop integration

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency

Immediate Consistency

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

Relationships in graphs

Transaction concepts

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

atomic operations within a single document possible

ACID

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

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users can be defined per database

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Role-based access control

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Neo4j delivers graph technology that has been battle tested for performance and scale...
» more

Competitive advantages

Neo4j is the market leader, graph database category creator, and the most widely...
» more

Typical application scenarios

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

Key customers

Over 800 commercial customers and over 4300 startups use Neo4j. Flagship customers...
» more

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

This Week in Neo4j: GraphRAG, Testcontainers, Metadata Management, App Dev and more
11 May 2024

Creating the GQL Database Language Standard
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

We invite representatives of system vendors to contact us for updating and extending the system information,
and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.