DBMS > Couchbase vs. Informix vs. Neo4j vs. OrientDB vs. TerminusDB

System Properties Comparison Couchbase vs. Informix vs. Neo4j vs. OrientDB vs. TerminusDB

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

A distributed document store with integrated cache, a powerful search engine, in-built operational and analytical capabilities, and an embedded mobile database

A secure embeddable database from IBM, positioned besides IBM Db2 as a relatively low-cost product optimized for OLTP and Internet of Things data

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

Multi-model DBMS (Document, Graph, Key/Value)

Scalable Graph Database platform making enterprise data available by exploiting inferred entities and relationships

Primary database model

Document store

Relational DBMS

Since Version 12.10 support for JSON/BSON datatypes compatible with MongoDB

Graph DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store

Graph DBMS

Secondary database models

Key-value store

originating from the former Membase product and supporting the Memcached protocol
Spatial DBMS

using the Geocouch extension
Search engine
Time Series DBMS
Vector DBMS

Document store
Spatial DBMS
Time Series DBMS

with Informix TimeSeries Extension

Document store
RDF store

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

Score	16.59
Rank	#36	Overall
	#5	Document stores

Score	17.12
Rank	#34	Overall
	#21	Relational DBMS

Score	44.89
Rank	#21	Overall
	#1	Graph DBMS

Score	3.25
Rank	#89	Overall
	#16	Document stores
	#6	Graph DBMS
	#13	Key-value stores

Score	0.23
Rank	#316	Overall
	#27	Graph DBMS

Website

www.couchbase.com

www.ibm.com/products/informix

neo4j.com

orientdb.org

terminusdb.com

Technical documentation

docs.couchbase.com

informix.hcldoc.com
www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SSGU8G/welcomeIfxServers.html

neo4j.com/docs

www.orientdb.com/docs/last/index.html

terminusdb.github.io/terminusdb/#

Developer

Couchbase, Inc.

IBM, HCL Technologies

Effective May 1st, 2017, HCL took on development, technical support, and product management teams, and works jointly with IBM on product strategy, marketing, and sales.

Neo4j, Inc.

OrientDB LTD; CallidusCloud; SAP

DataChemist Ltd.

Initial release

2011

1984

2007

2010

2018

Current release

Server: 7.2, June 2023; Mobile: 3.1, March 2022; Couchbase Capella (DBaaS), June 2023

14.10.FC5, November 2020

5.20, May 2024

3.2.29, March 2024

11.0.0, January 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Business Source License (BSL 1.1); Commercial licenses also available

commercial

free developer edition available

Open Source

GPL version3, commercial licenses available

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

GPL V3

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, C++, Go and Erlang

C, C++ and Java

Java, Scala

Java

Prolog, Rust

Server operating systems

Linux
OS X
Windows

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
macOS
Solaris
Windows

Linux

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

All OS with a Java JDK (>= JDK 6)

Linux

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free and schema-optional

schema-free

Schema can be enforced for whole record ("schema-full") or for some fields only ("schema-hybrid")

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

Since Version 12.10 support for JSON/BSON datatypes

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

SQL++, extends ANSI SQL to JSON for operational, transactional, and analytic use cases

yes

SQL-like query language, no joins

SQL-like query language (WOQL)

APIs and other access methods

CLI Client
HTTP REST
Kafka Connector
Native language bindings for CRUD, Query, Search and Analytics APIs
Spark Connector
Spring Data

JDBC
JSON API

MongoDB compatible
MQTT (Message Queue Telemetry Transport)
ODBC
RESTful HTTP API

Bolt protocol
Cypher query language
Java API
Neo4j-OGM

Object Graph Mapper
RESTful HTTP API
Spring Data Neo4j
TinkerPop 3

Tinkerpop technology stack with Blueprints, Gremlin, Pipes
Java API
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

OWL
RESTful HTTP API
WOQL (Web Object Query Language)

Supported programming languages

.Net
C
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Kotlin
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

.Net
C
C++
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby

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

.Net
C
C#
C++
Clojure
Java
JavaScript
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

JavaScript
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

Functions and timers in JavaScript and UDFs in Java, Python, SQL++

yes

User defined Procedures and Functions

Java, Javascript

yes

Triggers

yes

via the TAP protocol

yes

via event handler

Hooks

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Automatic Sharding

Sharding

yes using Neo4j Fabric

Sharding

Graph Partitioning

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication

including cross data center replication
Source-replica replication

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

Causal Clustering using Raft protocol

available in in Enterprise Version only

Multi-source replication

Journaling Streams

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

could be achieved with distributed queries

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

selectable on a per-operation basis

Immediate Consistency

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

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Relationships in graphs

yes

relationship in graphs

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

in-memory journaling

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

Ephemeral buckets

yes

User concepts

Access control

User and Administrator separation with password-based and LDAP integrated Authentication. Role-base access control.

Users with fine-grained authentication, authorization, and auditing controls

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

Access rights for users and roles; record level security configurable

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...
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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...
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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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