DBMS > Dgraph vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. GraphDB vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. RDF4J

System Properties Comparison Dgraph vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. GraphDB vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. RDF4J

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Distributed and scalable native Graph DBMS

Cloud-hosted realtime document store. iOS, Android, and JavaScript clients share one Realtime Database instance and automatically receive updates with the newest data.

Enterprise-ready RDF and graph database with efficient reasoning, cluster and external index synchronization support. It supports also SQL JDBC access to Knowledge Graph and GraphQL over SPARQL.

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

RDF4J is a Java framework for processing RDF data, supporting both memory-based and a disk-based storage.

Primary database model

Secondary database models

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	1.53
Rank	#152	Overall
	#15	Graph DBMS

Score	13.64
Rank	#39	Overall
	#6	Document stores

Score	3.25
Rank	#91	Overall
	#7	Graph DBMS
	#4	RDF stores

Score	821.56
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	0.74
Rank	#222	Overall
	#9	RDF stores

Website

dgraph.io

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

www.ontotext.com

www.microsoft.com/en-us/sql-server

rdf4j.org

Technical documentation

dgraph.io/docs

firebase.google.com/docs/database

graphdb.ontotext.com/documentation

learn.microsoft.com/en-US/sql/sql-server

rdf4j.org/documentation

Social network pages

Developer

Dgraph Labs, Inc.

Google

acquired by Google 2014

Ontotext

Microsoft

Since 2016 officially forked into an Eclipse project, former developer was Aduna Software.

Initial release

2016

2012

2000

1989

2004

Current release

10.4, October 2023

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache 2.0

commercial

Some plugins of GraphDB Workbench are open sourced

commercial

restricted free version is available

Open Source

Eclipse Distribution License (EDL), v1.0.

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

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Implementation language

Java

C++

Java

Server operating systems

Linux
OS X
Windows

hosted

All OS with a Java VM
Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
Windows

Linux
OS X
Unix
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

schema-free and OWL/RDFS-schema support; RDF shapes

yes

RDF Schemas

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

Secondary indexes

yes

yes, supports real-time synchronization and indexing in SOLR/Elastic search/Lucene and GeoSPARQL geometry data indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

stored SPARQL accessed as SQL using Apache Calcite through JDBC/ODBC

yes

APIs and other access methods

GraphQL query language
gRPC (using protocol buffers) API
HTTP API

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

GeoSPARQL
GraphQL
GraphQL Federation
Java API
JDBC
RDF4J API
RDFS
RIO
Sail API
Sesame REST HTTP Protocol
SPARQL 1.1

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
OLE DB
Tabular Data Stream (TDS)

Java API
RIO

RDF Input/Output
Sail API
SeRQL

Sesame RDF Query Language
Sesame REST HTTP Protocol
SPARQL

Supported programming languages

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

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

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

C#
C++
Delphi
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Visual Basic

Java
PHP
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

limited functionality with using 'rules'

well-defined plugin interfaces; JavaScript server-side extensibility

Transact SQL, .NET languages, R, Python and (with SQL Server 2019) Java

yes

Triggers

Callbacks are triggered when data changes

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

yes

none

tables can be distributed across several files (horizontal partitioning); sharding through federation

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Synchronous replication via Raft

Multi-source replication

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

none

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency

if the client is offline
Immediate Consistency

if the client is online

Immediate Consistency, Eventual consistency (configurable in cluster mode per master or individual client request)

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Constraint checking

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

yes

ACID

Isolation support depends on the API used

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

in-memory storage is supported as well

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

User concepts

Access control

Planned for future releases

yes, based on authentication and database rules

Default Basic authentication through RDF4J client, or via Java when run with cURL, default token-based in the Workbench or via Rest API, optional access through OpenID or Kerberos single sign-on.

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Ontotext GraphDB is a semantic database engine that allows organizations to build...
» more

Competitive advantages

GraphDB allows you to link text and data in big knowledge graphs. It’s easy to experiment...
» more

Typical application scenarios

Metadata enrichment and management, linked data publishing, semantic inferencing...
» more

Key customers

GraphDB provides a platform for building next-generation AI and Knowledge Graph...
» more

Market metrics

GraphDB is the most utilized semantic triplestore for mission-critical enterprise...
» more

Licensing and pricing models

GraphDB Free is a non-commercial version and is free to use. GraphDB Enterprise edition...
» more

News

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6 June 2024

Matching Skills and Candidates with Graph RAG
31 May 2024

A Triple Store RAG Retriever
29 May 2024

Integrating GraphDB with Relational Database Systems
23 May 2024

Understanding the Graph Center of Excellence
17 May 2024

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