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DBMS > Dgraph vs. MarkLogic vs. Neo4j vs. Sphinx

System Properties Comparison Dgraph vs. MarkLogic vs. Neo4j vs. Sphinx

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines
NameDgraph  Xexclude from comparisonMarkLogic  Xexclude from comparisonNeo4j  Xexclude from comparisonSphinx  Xexclude from comparison
DescriptionDistributed and scalable native Graph DBMSOperational and transactional Enterprise NoSQL databaseScalable, ACID-compliant graph database designed with a high-performance distributed cluster architecture, available in self-hosted and cloud offeringsOpen source search engine for searching in data from different sources, e.g. relational databases
Primary database modelGraph DBMSDocument store
Native XML DBMS
RDF store infoas of version 7
Search engine
Graph DBMSSearch engine
DB-Engines Ranking infomeasures the popularity of database management systemsranking trend
Trend Chart
Score1.48
Rank#158  Overall
#15  Graph DBMS
Score6.50
Rank#56  Overall
#10  Document stores
#1  Native XML DBMS
#1  RDF stores
#5  Search engines
Score44.47
Rank#23  Overall
#1  Graph DBMS
Score6.03
Rank#60  Overall
#6  Search engines
Websitedgraph.iowww.marklogic.comneo4j.comsphinxsearch.com
Technical documentationdgraph.io/­docsdocs.marklogic.comneo4j.com/­docssphinxsearch.com/­docs
DeveloperDgraph Labs, Inc.MarkLogic Corp.Neo4j, Inc.Sphinx Technologies Inc.
Initial release2016200120072001
Current release11.0, December 20225.19, April 20243.5.1, February 2023
License infoCommercial or Open SourceOpen Source infoApache 2.0commercial inforestricted free version is availableOpen Source infoGPL version3, commercial licenses availableOpen Source infoGPL version 2, commercial licence available
Cloud-based only infoOnly available as a cloud servicenononono
DBaaS offerings (sponsored links) infoDatabase 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 languageGoC++Java, ScalaC++
Server operating systemsLinux
OS X
Windows
Linux
OS X
Windows
Linux infoCan also be used server-less as embedded Java database.
OS X
Solaris
Windows
FreeBSD
Linux
NetBSD
OS X
Solaris
Windows
Data schemeschema-freeschema-free infoSchema can be enforcedschema-free and schema-optionalyes
Typing infopredefined data types such as float or dateyesyesyesno
XML support infoSome form of processing data in XML format, e.g. support for XML data structures, and/or support for XPath, XQuery or XSLT.noyes
Secondary indexesyesyesyes infopluggable indexing subsystem, by default Apache Luceneyes infofull-text index on all search fields
SQL infoSupport of SQLnoyes infoSQL92noSQL-like query language (SphinxQL)
APIs and other access methodsGraphQL query language
gRPC (using protocol buffers) API
HTTP API
Java API
Node.js Client API
ODBC
proprietary Optic API infoProprietary Query API, introduced with version 9
RESTful HTTP API
SPARQL
WebDAV
XDBC
XQuery
XSLT
Bolt protocol
Cypher query language
Java API
Neo4j-OGM infoObject Graph Mapper
RESTful HTTP API
Spring Data Neo4j
TinkerPop 3
Proprietary protocol
Supported programming languagesC#
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby
C
C#
C++
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
.Net
Clojure
Elixir
Go
Groovy
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala
C++ infounofficial client library
Java
Perl infounofficial client library
PHP
Python
Ruby infounofficial client library
Server-side scripts infoStored proceduresnoyes infovia XQuery or JavaScriptyes infoUser defined Procedures and Functionsno
Triggersnoyesyes infovia event handlerno
Partitioning methods infoMethods for storing different data on different nodesyesShardingyes using Neo4j FabricSharding infoPartitioning is done manually, search queries against distributed index is supported
Replication methods infoMethods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodesSynchronous replication via RaftyesCausal Clustering using Raft protocol infoavailable in in Enterprise Version onlynone
MapReduce infoOffers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methodsnoyes infovia Hadoop Connector, HDFS Direct Access and in-database MapReduce jobsnono
Consistency concepts infoMethods to ensure consistency in a distributed systemImmediate ConsistencyImmediate ConsistencyCausal and Eventual Consistency configurable in Causal Cluster setup
Immediate Consistency in stand-alone mode
Foreign keys infoReferential integritynonoyes infoRelationships in graphsno
Transaction concepts infoSupport to ensure data integrity after non-atomic manipulations of dataACIDACID infocan act as a resource manager in an XA/JTA transactionACIDno
Concurrency infoSupport for concurrent manipulation of datayesyesyesyes
Durability infoSupport for making data persistentyesyesyesyes infoThe original contents of fields are not stored in the Sphinx index.
In-memory capabilities infoIs there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.yes, with Range Indexes
User concepts infoAccess controlno infoPlanned for future releasesRole-based access control at the document and subdocument levelsUsers, roles and permissions. Pluggable authentication with supported standards (LDAP, Active Directory, Kerberos)no
More information provided by the system vendor
DgraphMarkLogicNeo4jSphinx
Specific characteristicsNeo4j delivers graph technology that has been battle tested for performance and scale...
» more
Competitive advantagesNeo4j is the market leader, graph database category creator, and the most widely...
» more
Typical application scenariosReal-Time Recommendations Master Data Management Identity and Access Management Network...
» more
Key customersOver 800 commercial customers and over 4300 startups use Neo4j. Flagship customers...
» more
Market metricsNeo4j boasts the world's largest graph database ecosystem with more than 140 million...
» more
Licensing and pricing modelsGPL v3 license that can be used all the places where you might use MySQL. Neo4j Commercial...
» more
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