DBMS > CouchDB vs. MySQL vs. Neo4j vs. STSdb vs. SurrealDB

System Properties Comparison CouchDB vs. MySQL vs. Neo4j vs. STSdb vs. SurrealDB

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.

Widely used open source RDBMS

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

Key-Value Store with special method for indexing

optimized for high performance using a special indexing method

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

Primary database model

Document store

Relational DBMS

Key/Value like access via memcached API

Graph DBMS

Key-value store

Document store
Graph DBMS

Secondary database models

Spatial DBMS

using the Geocouch extension

Document store
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	8.30
Rank	#47	Overall
	#7	Document stores

Score	1061.34
Rank	#2	Overall
	#2	Relational DBMS

Score	44.89
Rank	#21	Overall
	#1	Graph DBMS

Score	0.10
Rank	#357	Overall
	#51	Key-value stores

Score	1.02
Rank	#190	Overall
	#33	Document stores
	#18	Graph DBMS

Website

couchdb.apache.org

www.mysql.com

neo4j.com

github.com/STSSoft/STSdb4

surrealdb.com

Technical documentation

docs.couchdb.org/en/stable

dev.mysql.com/doc

neo4j.com/docs

surrealdb.com/docs

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

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

Oracle

since 2010, originally MySQL AB, then Sun

Neo4j, Inc.

STS Soft SC

SurrealDB Ltd

Initial release

2005

1995

2007

2011

2022

Current release

3.3.3, December 2023

8.4.0, April 2024

5.20, May 2024

4.0.8, September 2015

v1.5.0, May 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

GPL version 2. Commercial licenses with extended functionallity are available

Open Source

GPL version3, commercial licenses available

Open Source

GPLv2, commercial license available

Open Source

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

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Implementation language

Erlang

C and C++

Java, Scala

Rust

Server operating systems

Android
BSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

FreeBSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Linux

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

Windows

Linux
macOS
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free and schema-optional

yes

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

primitive types and user defined types (classes)

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

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

with proprietary extensions

SQL-like query language

APIs and other access methods

RESTful HTTP/JSON API

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary native API

Bolt protocol
Cypher query language
Java API
Neo4j-OGM

Object Graph Mapper
RESTful HTTP API
Spring Data Neo4j
TinkerPop 3

.NET Client API

GraphQL
RESTful HTTP API
WebSocket

Supported programming languages

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

Ada
C
C#
C++
D
Delphi
Eiffel
Erlang
Haskell
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl

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

C#
Java

Deno
Go
JavaScript (Node.js)
Rust

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

View functions in JavaScript

yes

proprietary syntax

yes

User defined Procedures and Functions

Triggers

yes

via event handler

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

improved architecture with release 2.0

horizontal partitioning, sharding with MySQL Cluster or MySQL Fabric

yes using Neo4j Fabric

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

Causal Clustering using Raft protocol

available in in Enterprise Version only

none

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

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

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

not for MyISAM storage engine

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

not for MyISAM storage engine

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

strategy: optimistic locking

yes

table locks or row locks depending on storage engine

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

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

no user groups or roles

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

yes, based on authentication and database rules

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Market metrics

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Licensing and pricing models

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