DBMS > Firebase Realtime Database vs. Google Cloud Datastore vs. MySQL vs. Neo4j vs. Trafodion

System Properties Comparison Firebase Realtime Database vs. Google Cloud Datastore vs. MySQL vs. Neo4j vs. Trafodion

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Apache Trafodion has been retired in 2021. Therefore it is excluded from the DB-Engines Ranking.

Description

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

Automatically scaling NoSQL Database as a Service (DBaaS) on the Google Cloud Platform

Widely used open source RDBMS

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

Transactional SQL-on-Hadoop DBMS

Primary database model

Document store

Relational DBMS

Key/Value like access via memcached API

Graph DBMS

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	14.29
Rank	#39	Overall
	#6	Document stores

Score	4.47
Rank	#76	Overall
	#12	Document stores

Score	1083.74
Rank	#2	Overall
	#2	Relational DBMS

Score	44.46
Rank	#23	Overall
	#1	Graph DBMS

Website

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

cloud.google.com/datastore

www.mysql.com

neo4j.com

trafodion.apache.org

Technical documentation

firebase.google.com/docs/database

cloud.google.com/datastore/docs

dev.mysql.com/doc

neo4j.com/docs

trafodion.apache.org/documentation.html

Developer

Google

acquired by Google 2014

Google

Oracle

since 2010, originally MySQL AB, then Sun

Neo4j, Inc.

Apache Software Foundation, originally developed by HP

Initial release

2012

2008

1995

2007

2014

Current release

8.4.0, April 2024

5.19, April 2024

2.3.0, February 2019

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

GPL version 2. Commercial licenses with extended functionallity are available

Open Source

GPL version3, commercial licenses available

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

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

Aiven for MySQL: Fully managed MySQL, deployable in the cloud of your choice, with seamless integrations and lightning-fast setup.

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

Implementation language

C and C++

Java, Scala

C++, Java

Server operating systems

hosted

FreeBSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Linux

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

Linux

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free and schema-optional

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

yes, details here

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

pluggable indexing subsystem, by default Apache Lucene

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like query language (GQL)

yes

with proprietary extensions

yes

APIs and other access methods

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

gRPC (using protocol buffers) API
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary native API

Bolt protocol
Cypher query language
Java API
Neo4j-OGM

Object Graph Mapper
RESTful HTTP API
Spring Data Neo4j
TinkerPop 3

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC

Supported programming languages

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

.Net
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby

Ada
C
C#
C++
D
Delphi
Eiffel
Erlang
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

All languages supporting JDBC/ODBC/ADO.Net

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

limited functionality with using 'rules'

using Google App Engine

yes

proprietary syntax

yes

User defined Procedures and Functions

Java Stored Procedures

Triggers

Callbacks are triggered when data changes

Callbacks using the Google Apps Engine

yes

via event handler

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

horizontal partitioning, sharding with MySQL Cluster or MySQL Fabric

yes using Neo4j Fabric

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication using Paxos

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

Causal Clustering using Raft protocol

available in in Enterprise Version only

yes, via HBase

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

using Google Cloud Dataflow

yes

via user defined functions and HBase

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency

if the client is offline
Immediate Consistency

if the client is online

Immediate Consistency or Eventual Consistency depending on type of query and configuration

Strong Consistency is default for entity lookups and queries within an Entity Group (but can instead be made eventually consistent). Other queries are always eventual consistent.

Immediate Consistency

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

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

via ReferenceProperties or Ancestor paths

yes

not for MyISAM storage engine

yes

Relationships in graphs

yes

Transaction concepts

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

yes

ACID

Serializable Isolation within Transactions, Read Committed outside of Transactions

ACID

not for MyISAM storage engine

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

table locks or row locks depending on storage engine

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.

yes

User concepts

Access control

yes, based on authentication and database rules

Access rights for users, groups and roles based on Google Cloud Identity and Access Management (IAM)

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

no user groups or roles

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

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Neo4j delivers graph technology that has been battle tested for performance and scale...
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Competitive advantages

Neo4j is the market leader, graph database category creator, and the most widely...
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Typical application scenarios

Real-Time Recommendations Master Data Management Identity and Access Management Network...
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Key customers

Over 800 commercial customers and over 4300 startups use Neo4j. Flagship customers...
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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

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