DBMS > Datomic vs. Neo4j vs. OpenSearch vs. RocksDB

System Properties Comparison Datomic vs. Neo4j vs. OpenSearch vs. RocksDB

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Datomic builds on immutable values, supports point-in-time queries and uses 3rd party systems for durability

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

A distributed, RESTful search and analytics engine forked from Elasticsearch and based on Apache Lucene

Embeddable persistent key-value store optimized for fast storage (flash and RAM)

Primary database model

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

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

Score	1.59
Rank	#150	Overall
	#69	Relational DBMS

Score	44.46
Rank	#23	Overall
	#1	Graph DBMS

Score	16.36
Rank	#37	Overall
	#4	Search engines

Score	3.65
Rank	#85	Overall
	#11	Key-value stores

Website

www.datomic.com

neo4j.com

github.com/opensearch-project
opensearch.org

rocksdb.org

Technical documentation

docs.datomic.com

neo4j.com/docs

opensearch.org/docs/latest

github.com/facebook/rocksdb/wiki

Developer

Cognitect

Neo4j, Inc.

Amazon Web Services

Facebook, Inc.

Initial release

2012

2007

2021

2013

Current release

1.0.6735, June 2023

5.19, April 2024

2.5.0, January 2023

8.11.4, April 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

limited edition free

Open Source

GPL version3, commercial licenses available

Open Source

Apache Version 2.0

Open Source

BSD

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.

Aiven for OpenSearch: Fully managed open source search and analytics suite. Out-of-the-box integrations get you up and running in a couple of clicks.

Implementation language

Java, Clojure

Java, Scala

Java

C++

Server operating systems

All OS with a Java VM

Linux

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

All OS with a Java VM

Linux

Data scheme

yes

schema-free and schema-optional

schema-free

Flexible type definitions. Once a type is defined, it is persistent

schema-free

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.

Secondary indexes

yes

pluggable indexing subsystem, by default Apache Lucene

yes

All search fields are automatically indexed

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like query language

APIs and other access methods

RESTful HTTP API

Bolt protocol
Cypher query language
Java API
Neo4j-OGM

Object Graph Mapper
RESTful HTTP API
Spring Data Neo4j
TinkerPop 3

Java API
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

C++ API
Java API

Supported programming languages

Clojure
Java

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

Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby

Elasticsearch client

C
C++
Go
Java
Perl
Python
Ruby

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

Transaction Functions

yes

User defined Procedures and Functions

yes

Triggers

By using transaction functions

yes

via event handler

yes

by using the 'percolation' feature

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

But extensive use of caching in the application peers

yes using Neo4j Fabric

Sharding

horizontal partitioning

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

none

But extensive use of caching in the application peers

Causal Clustering using Raft protocol

available in in Enterprise Version only

yes

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

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

Eventual Consistency

Synchronous doc based replication. Get by ID may show delays up to 1 sec. Configurable write consistency: one, quorum, all

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Relationships in graphs

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

yes

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

using external storage systems (e.g. Cassandra, DynamoDB, PostgreSQL, Couchbase and others)

yes

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

recommended only for testing and development

yes

User concepts

Access control

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

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

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

OpenSearch is a highly scalable and extensible open-source software suite for search,...
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Competitive advantages

Neo4j is the market leader, graph database category creator, and the most widely...
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Distributed as fully open source under Apache License, Version 2.0 (ALv2), OpenSearch...
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Typical application scenarios

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

The OpenSearch platform is used across a broad range of search , analytics, and observability...
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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...
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The OpenSearch Project offers open source software licensed under Apache License...
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News

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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

What Is Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)?
24 April 2024

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