DBMS > Elasticsearch vs. Memcached vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. Neo4j vs. Splunk

System Properties Comparison Elasticsearch vs. Memcached vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. Neo4j vs. Splunk

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

A distributed, RESTful modern search and analytics engine based on Apache Lucene

Elasticsearch lets you perform and combine many types of searches such as structured, unstructured, geo, and metric

In-memory key-value store, originally intended for caching

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

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

Analytics Platform for Big Data

Primary database model

Secondary database models

Document store
Spatial DBMS
Vector DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	135.35
Rank	#7	Overall
	#1	Search engines

Score	19.42
Rank	#32	Overall
	#4	Key-value stores

Score	824.29
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	44.46
Rank	#23	Overall
	#1	Graph DBMS

Score	86.45
Rank	#14	Overall
	#2	Search engines

Website

www.elastic.co/elasticsearch

www.memcached.org

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

neo4j.com

www.splunk.com

Technical documentation

www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/index.html

github.com/memcached/memcached/wiki

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

neo4j.com/docs

docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk

Developer

Elastic

Danga Interactive

originally developed by Brad Fitzpatrick for LiveJournal

Microsoft

Neo4j, Inc.

Splunk Inc.

Initial release

2010

2003

1989

2007

2003

Current release

8.6, January 2023

1.6.25, March 2024

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

5.19, April 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Elastic License

Open Source

BSD license

commercial

restricted free version is available

Open Source

GPL version3, commercial licenses available

commercial

Limited free edition and free developer edition available

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

Providers of DBaaS offerings, please contact us to be listed.

SQLServer Flex @ STACKIT offers a managed version of SQL Server with adjustable CPU, RAM, storage amount and speed, in enterprise grade to perfectly match all application requirements. All services are 100% GDPR-compliant.

Neo4j Aura: Neo4j’s fully managed cloud service: The zero-admin, always-on graph database for cloud developers.

Implementation language

Java

C++

Java, Scala

Server operating systems

All OS with a Java VM

FreeBSD
Linux
OS X
Unix
Windows

Linux
Windows

Linux

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

Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

Flexible type definitions. Once a type is defined, it is persistent

schema-free

yes

schema-free and schema-optional

yes

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

All search fields are automatically indexed

yes

pluggable indexing subsystem, by default Apache Lucene

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like query language

yes

Splunk Search Processing Language for search commands

APIs and other access methods

Java API
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Proprietary protocol

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

Bolt protocol
Cypher query language
Java API
Neo4j-OGM

Object Graph Mapper
RESTful HTTP API
Spring Data Neo4j
TinkerPop 3

HTTP REST

Supported programming languages

.Net
Groovy
Community Contributed Clients
Java
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

.Net
C
C++
ColdFusion
Erlang
Java
Lisp
Lua
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

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

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

C#
Java
JavaScript
PHP
Python
Ruby

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

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

yes

User defined Procedures and Functions

yes

Triggers

yes

by using the 'percolation' feature

yes

via event handler

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

none

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

yes using Neo4j Fabric

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

none

Repcached, a Memcached patch, provides this functionallity

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

Causal Clustering using Raft protocol

available in in Enterprise Version only

Multi-source replication

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

ES-Hadoop Connector

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency

Synchronous doc based replication. Get by ID may show delays up to 1 sec. Configurable write consistency: one, quorum, all

Immediate Consistency

Causal and Eventual Consistency configurable in Causal Cluster setup
Immediate Consistency in stand-alone mode

Eventual Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Relationships in graphs

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

A 'Transaction' in Splunk has a different meaning: grouping related events into a single one for later searching

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

In-memory capabilities

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

Memcached and Redis integration

yes

User concepts

Access control

yes

using SASL (Simple Authentication and Security Layer) protocol

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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

Access rights for users and roles

More information provided by the system vendor

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Key customers

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Market metrics

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Licensing and pricing models

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