DBMS > Derby vs. Lovefield vs. Neo4j vs. Snowflake vs. Stardog

System Properties Comparison Derby vs. Lovefield vs. Neo4j vs. Snowflake vs. Stardog

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

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

Cloud-based data warehousing service for structured and semi-structured data

Enterprise Knowledge Graph platform and graph DBMS with high availability, high performance reasoning, and virtualization

Primary database model

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

Score	5.30
Rank	#66	Overall
	#36	Relational DBMS

Score	0.32
Rank	#290	Overall
	#132	Relational DBMS

Score	44.47
Rank	#23	Overall
	#1	Graph DBMS

Score	123.20
Rank	#9	Overall
	#6	Relational DBMS

Score	2.05
Rank	#129	Overall
	#11	Graph DBMS
	#6	RDF stores

Website

db.apache.org/derby

google.github.io/lovefield

neo4j.com

www.snowflake.com

www.stardog.com

Technical documentation

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

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

neo4j.com/docs

docs.snowflake.net/manuals/index.html

docs.stardog.com

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Google

Neo4j, Inc.

Snowflake Computing Inc.

Stardog-Union

Initial release

1997

2014

2007

2014

2010

Current release

10.17.1.0, November 2023

2.1.12, February 2017

5.18.1, March 2024

7.3.0, May 2020

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

GPL version3, commercial licenses available

commercial

60-day fully-featured trial license; 1-year fully-featured non-commercial use license for academics/students

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

Java

Server operating systems

All OS with a Java VM

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

tested with Chrome, Firefox, IE, Safari

Linux

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

hosted

Linux
macOS
Windows

Data scheme

yes

schema-free and schema-optional

yes

support of semi-structured data formats (JSON, XML, Avro)

schema-free and OWL/RDFS-schema support

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

Import/export of XML data possible

Secondary indexes

yes

pluggable indexing subsystem, by default Apache Lucene

yes

supports real-time indexing in full-text and geospatial

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

SQL-like query language

via JavaScript builder pattern

yes

Yes, compatible with all major SQL variants through dedicated BI/SQL Server

APIs and other access methods

JDBC

Bolt protocol
Cypher query language
Java API
Neo4j-OGM

Object Graph Mapper
RESTful HTTP API
Spring Data Neo4j
TinkerPop 3

CLI Client
JDBC
ODBC

GraphQL query language
HTTP API
Jena RDF API
OWL
RDF4J API
Sesame REST HTTP Protocol
SNARL
SPARQL
Spring Data
Stardog Studio
TinkerPop 3

Supported programming languages

Java

JavaScript

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

JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

.Net
Clojure
Groovy
Java
JavaScript
Python
Ruby

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

Java Stored Procedures

yes

User defined Procedures and Functions

user defined functions

user defined functions and aggregates, HTTP Server extensions in Java

Triggers

yes

Using read-only observers

yes

via event handler

similar concept for controling cloud resources

yes

via event handlers

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

yes using Neo4j Fabric

yes

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Source-replica replication

none

Causal Clustering using Raft protocol

available in in Enterprise Version only

yes

Multi-source replication in HA-Cluster

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

Immediate Consistency

Immediate Consistency in HA-Cluster

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

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

User concepts

Access control

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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

Users with fine-grained authorization concept, user roles and pluggable authentication

Access rights for users and roles

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...
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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...
» 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

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17 April 2024

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17 April 2024

This Week in Neo4j: Podcast, RAG, Neo4j Guide, ERP and more
13 April 2024

Neo4j Brings GraphRAG Capabilities for GenAI to Google Cloud
9 April 2024

Neo4j Is Now SOC2 Type 2 Compliant
8 April 2024

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