DBMS > Derby vs. Lovefield vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Neo4j vs. Tkrzw

System Properties Comparison Derby vs. Lovefield vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Neo4j vs. Tkrzw

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Full-featured RDBMS with a small footprint, either embedded into a Java application or used as a database server.

Embeddable relational database for web apps written in pure JavaScript

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

A concept of libraries, allowing an application program to store and query key-value pairs in a file. Successor of Tokyo Cabinet and Kyoto Cabinet

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store
Wide column store

Graph DBMS

Key-value store

Secondary database models

Spatial DBMS

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

Score	4.71
Rank	#69	Overall
	#37	Relational DBMS

Score	0.29
Rank	#293	Overall
	#133	Relational DBMS

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	0.00
Rank	#383	Overall
	#60	Key-value stores

Website

db.apache.org/derby

google.github.io/lovefield

azure.microsoft.com/services/cosmos-db

neo4j.com

dbmx.net/tkrzw

Technical documentation

db.apache.org/derby/manuals/index.html

github.com/google/lovefield/blob/master/docs/spec_index.md

learn.microsoft.com/azure/cosmos-db

neo4j.com/docs

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Google

Microsoft

Neo4j, Inc.

Mikio Hirabayashi

Initial release

1997

2014

2007

2020

Current release

10.17.1.0, November 2023

2.1.12, February 2017

5.19, April 2024

0.9.3, August 2020

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

Apache 2.0

commercial

Open Source

GPL version3, commercial licenses available

Open Source

Apache Version 2.0

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

Java

JavaScript

Java, Scala

C++

Server operating systems

All OS with a Java VM

server-less, requires a JavaScript environment (browser, Node.js)

tested with Chrome, Firefox, IE, Safari

hosted

Linux

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

Linux
macOS

Data scheme

yes

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.

yes

Secondary indexes

yes

All properties auto-indexed by default

yes

pluggable indexing subsystem, by default Apache Lucene

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

SQL-like query language

via JavaScript builder pattern

SQL-like query language

APIs and other access methods

JDBC

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

Supported programming languages

Java

JavaScript

.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

C++
Java
Python
Ruby

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

Java Stored Procedures

JavaScript

yes

User defined Procedures and Functions

Triggers

yes

Using read-only observers

JavaScript

yes

via event handler

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

yes using Neo4j Fabric

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Source-replica replication

none

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

Causal Clustering using Raft protocol

available in in Enterprise Version only

none

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

with Hadoop integration

Integration with Hadoop/HDInsight on Azure*

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate 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

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Relationships in graphs

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

Multi-item ACID transactions with snapshot isolation within a partition

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

yes, by using IndexedDB or the cloud service Firebase Realtime Database

yes

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

using MemoryDB

yes

using specific database classes

User concepts

Access control

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Access rights can be defined down to the item level

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

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

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Competitive advantages

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Typical application scenarios

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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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