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DBMS > Drizzle vs. MariaDB vs. Neo4j vs. Sphinx

System Properties Comparison Drizzle vs. MariaDB vs. Neo4j vs. Sphinx

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines
NameDrizzle  Xexclude from comparisonMariaDB  Xexclude from comparisonNeo4j  Xexclude from comparisonSphinx  Xexclude from comparison
Drizzle has published its last release in September 2012. The open-source project is discontinued and Drizzle is excluded from the DB-Engines ranking.
DescriptionMySQL fork with a pluggable micro-kernel and with an emphasis of performance over compatibility.MySQL application compatible open source RDBMS, enhanced with high availability, security, interoperability and performance capabilities. MariaDB ColumnStore provides a column-oriented storage engine and MariaDB Xpand supports distributed SQL.Scalable, 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 modelRelational DBMSRelational DBMSGraph DBMSSearch engine
Secondary database modelsDocument store
Graph DBMS infowith OQGraph storage engine
Spatial DBMS
DB-Engines Ranking infomeasures the popularity of database management systemsranking trend
Trend Chart
Score93.21
Rank#13  Overall
#9  Relational DBMS
Score44.46
Rank#23  Overall
#1  Graph DBMS
Score5.98
Rank#56  Overall
#5  Search engines
Websitemariadb.com infoSite of MariaDB Corporation
mariadb.org infoSite of MariaDB Foundation
neo4j.comsphinxsearch.com
Technical documentationmariadb.com/­kb/­en/­libraryneo4j.com/­docssphinxsearch.com/­docs
DeveloperDrizzle project, originally started by Brian AkerMariaDB Corporation Ab (MariaDB Enterprise),
MariaDB Foundation (community MariaDB Server) infoThe lead developer Monty Widenius is the original author of MySQL
Neo4j, Inc.Sphinx Technologies Inc.
Initial release20082009 infoFork of MySQL, which was first released in 199520072001
Current release7.2.4, September 201211.3.2, February 20245.19, April 20243.5.1, February 2023
License infoCommercial or Open SourceOpen Source infoGNU GPLOpen Source infoGPL version 2, commercial enterprise subscription 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 languageC++C and C++Java, ScalaC++
Server operating systemsFreeBSD
Linux
OS X
FreeBSD
Linux
Solaris
Windows infoColumnStore storage engine not available on Windows
Linux infoCan also be used server-less as embedded Java database.
OS X
Solaris
Windows
FreeBSD
Linux
NetBSD
OS X
Solaris
Windows
Data schemeyesyes infoDynamic columns are supportedschema-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.yes
Secondary indexesyesyesyes infopluggable indexing subsystem, by default Apache Luceneyes infofull-text index on all search fields
SQL infoSupport of SQLyes infowith proprietary extensionsyes infowith proprietary extensionsnoSQL-like query language (SphinxQL)
APIs and other access methodsJDBCADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary native API
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++
Java
PHP
Ada
C
C#
C++
D
Eiffel
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl
.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 infoPL/SQL compatibility added with version 10.3yes infoUser defined Procedures and Functionsno
Triggersno infohooks for callbacks inside the server can be used.yesyes infovia event handlerno
Partitioning methods infoMethods for storing different data on different nodesShardingseveral options for horizontal partitioning and Shardingyes using Neo4j FabricSharding infoPartitioning is done manually, search queries against distributed index is supported
Replication methods infoMethods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodesMulti-source replication
Source-replica replication
Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication
Causal Clustering using Raft protocol infoavailable in in Enterprise Version onlynone
MapReduce infoOffers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methodsnononono
Consistency concepts infoMethods to ensure consistency in a distributed systemImmediate ConsistencyCausal and Eventual Consistency configurable in Causal Cluster setup
Immediate Consistency in stand-alone mode
Foreign keys infoReferential integrityyesyes infonot for MyISAM storage engineyes infoRelationships in graphsno
Transaction concepts infoSupport to ensure data integrity after non-atomic manipulations of dataACIDACID infonot for MyISAM storage engineACIDno
Concurrency infoSupport for concurrent manipulation of datayesyesyesyes
Durability infoSupport for making data persistentyesyes infonot for in-memory storage engineyesyes 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 infowith MEMORY storage engine
User concepts infoAccess controlPluggable authentication mechanisms infoe.g. LDAP, HTTPfine grained access rights according to SQL-standardUsers, roles and permissions. Pluggable authentication with supported standards (LDAP, Active Directory, Kerberos)no
More information provided by the system vendor
DrizzleMariaDBNeo4jSphinx
Specific characteristicsMariaDB is the most powerful open source relational database – modern SQL and JSON...
» more
Neo4j delivers graph technology that has been battle tested for performance and scale...
» more
Competitive advantagesMariaDB Servers have many features unavailable in other open source relational databases....
» more
Neo4j is the market leader, graph database category creator, and the most widely...
» more
Typical application scenariosWeb, SaaS and Cloud operational applications that require high availability, scalability...
» more
Real-Time Recommendations Master Data Management Identity and Access Management Network...
» more
Key customersDeutsche Bank, DBS Bank, Nasdaq, Red Hat, ServiceNow, Verizon and Walgreens Featured...
» more
Over 800 commercial customers and over 4300 startups use Neo4j. Flagship customers...
» more
Market metricsMariaDB is the default database in the LAMP stack supplied by Red Hat and SUSE Linux,...
» more
Neo4j boasts the world's largest graph database ecosystem with more than 140 million...
» more
Licensing and pricing modelsMariaDB plc subscriptions cover our free, open source database, Community Server,...
» more
GPL v3 license that can be used all the places where you might use MySQL. Neo4j Commercial...
» more
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