DBMS > Elasticsearch vs. Neo4j vs. PostgreSQL vs. SAP HANA vs. Sphinx
System Properties Comparison Elasticsearch vs. Neo4j vs. PostgreSQL vs. SAP HANA vs. Sphinx
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| Name | Elasticsearch Xexclude from comparison | Neo4j Xexclude from comparison | PostgreSQL Xexclude from comparison | SAP HANA Xexclude from comparison | Sphinx Xexclude from comparison | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 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 | Scalable, ACID-compliant graph database designed with a high-performance distributed cluster architecture, available in self-hosted and cloud offerings | Widely used open source RDBMS Developed as objectoriented DBMS (Postgres), gradually enhanced with 'standards' like SQL | In-memory, column based data store. Available as appliance or cloud service | Open source search engine for searching in data from different sources, e.g. relational databases | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Primary database model | Search engine | Graph DBMS | Relational DBMS with object oriented extensions, e.g.: user defined types/functions and inheritance. Handling of key/value pairs with hstore module. | Relational DBMS | Search engine | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Secondary database models | Document store Spatial DBMS Vector DBMS | Document store Graph DBMS with Apache AgeSpatial DBMS Vector DBMS with pgvector extension | Document store Graph DBMS with SAP Hana, Enterprise EditionSpatial DBMS | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Website | www.elastic.co/elasticsearch | neo4j.com | www.postgresql.org | www.sap.com/products/hana.html | sphinxsearch.com | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Technical documentation | www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/index.html | neo4j.com/docs | www.postgresql.org/docs | help.sap.com/hana | sphinxsearch.com/docs | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Developer | Elastic | Neo4j, Inc. | PostgreSQL Global Development Group www.postgresql.org/developer | SAP | Sphinx Technologies Inc. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Initial release | 2010 | 2007 | 1989 1989: Postgres, 1996: PostgreSQL | 2010 | 2001 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Current release | 8.6, January 2023 | 5.20, May 2024 | 16.3, May 2024 | 2.0 SPS07 (April 4, 2023), April 2023 | 3.5.1, February 2023 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| License Commercial or Open Source | Open Source Elastic License | Open Source GPL version3, commercial licenses available | Open Source BSD | commercial | Open Source GPL version 2, commercial licence available | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Cloud-based only Only available as a cloud service | no | no | no | no also available as a cloud based service | no | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 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. |
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| Implementation language | Java | Java, Scala | C | C++ | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Server operating systems | All OS with a Java VM | Linux Can also be used server-less as embedded Java database. OS X Solaris Windows | FreeBSD HP-UX Linux NetBSD OpenBSD OS X Solaris Unix Windows | Appliance or cloud-service | FreeBSD Linux NetBSD OS X Solaris Windows | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Data scheme | schema-free Flexible type definitions. Once a type is defined, it is persistent | schema-free and schema-optional | yes | yes | yes | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Typing predefined data types such as float or date | yes | yes | yes | yes | no | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 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. | no | yes specific XML-type available, but no XML query functionality. | no | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Secondary indexes | yes All search fields are automatically indexed | yes pluggable indexing subsystem, by default Apache Lucene | yes | yes | yes full-text index on all search fields | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| SQL Support of SQL | SQL-like query language | no | yes standard with numerous extensions | yes | SQL-like query language (SphinxQL) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| APIs and other access methods | Java API RESTful HTTP/JSON API | Bolt protocol Cypher query language Java API Neo4j-OGM Object Graph MapperRESTful HTTP API Spring Data Neo4j TinkerPop 3 | ADO.NET JDBC native C library ODBC streaming API for large objects | JDBC ODBC | Proprietary protocol | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Supported programming languages | .Net Groovy Community Contributed Clients Java JavaScript Perl PHP Python Ruby | .Net Clojure Elixir Go Groovy Haskell Java JavaScript Perl PHP Python Ruby Scala | .Net C C++ Delphi Java JDBCJavaScript (Node.js) Perl PHP Python Tcl | C++ unofficial client library Java Perl unofficial client libraryPHP Python Ruby unofficial client library | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Server-side scripts Stored procedures | yes | yes User defined Procedures and Functions | user defined functions realized in proprietary language PL/pgSQL or with common languages like Perl, Python, Tcl etc. | SQLScript, R | no | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Triggers | yes by using the 'percolation' feature | yes via event handler | yes | yes | no | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Partitioning methods Methods for storing different data on different nodes | Sharding | yes using Neo4j Fabric | partitioning by range, list and (since PostgreSQL 11) by hash | yes | Sharding Partitioning is done manually, search queries against distributed index is supported | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Replication methods Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes | yes | Causal Clustering using Raft protocol available in in Enterprise Version only | Source-replica replication other methods possible by using 3rd party extensions | yes | none | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| MapReduce Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods | ES-Hadoop Connector | no | no | no | no | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 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 | Causal and Eventual Consistency configurable in Causal Cluster setup Immediate Consistency in stand-alone mode | Immediate Consistency | Immediate Consistency | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Foreign keys Referential integrity | no | yes Relationships in graphs | yes | yes | no | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Transaction concepts Support to ensure data integrity after non-atomic manipulations of data | no | ACID | ACID | ACID | no | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Concurrency Support for concurrent manipulation of data | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Durability Support for making data persistent | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes The original contents of fields are not stored in the Sphinx index. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| In-memory capabilities Is there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only. | Memcached and Redis integration | no | yes | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| User concepts Access control | Users, roles and permissions. Pluggable authentication with supported standards (LDAP, Active Directory, Kerberos) | fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard | yes | no | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| More information provided by the system vendor | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Elasticsearch | Neo4j | PostgreSQL | SAP HANA | Sphinx | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 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... » more | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Typical application scenarios | Real-Time Recommendations Master Data Management Identity and Access Management Network... » more | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 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 | Neo4j-Databricks Connector Delivers Deeper Insights, Faster GenAI Development This Week in Neo4j: Podcast, Testing, Knowledge Graph, GenAI and more Neo4j and Snowflake Bring Graph Data Science Into the AI Data Cloud RDF vs. Property Graphs: Choosing the Right Approach for Implementing a Knowledge Graph This Week in Neo4j: Importing Data, NODES, GenAI, Going Meta and more | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| 3rd parties | Aiven for PostgreSQL: Fully managed PostgreSQL for developers with 70+ extensions and flexible orchestration tools.
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| Elasticsearch | Neo4j | PostgreSQL | SAP HANA | Sphinx | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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