DBMS > Firebase Realtime Database vs. GraphDB vs. MongoDB vs. RDF4J

System Properties Comparison Firebase Realtime Database vs. GraphDB vs. MongoDB vs. RDF4J

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

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

Enterprise-ready RDF and graph database with efficient reasoning, cluster and external index synchronization support. It supports also SQL JDBC access to Knowledge Graph and GraphQL over SPARQL.

One of the most popular document stores available both as a fully managed cloud service and for deployment on self-managed infrastructure

RDF4J is a Java framework for processing RDF data, supporting both memory-based and a disk-based storage.

Primary database model

Secondary database models

Spatial DBMS
Search engine

integrated Lucene index, currently in MongoDB Atlas only.
Time Series DBMS

Time Series Collections introduced in Release 5.0
Vector DBMS

currently available in the MongoDB Atlas cloud service only

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

Score	15.00
Rank	#39	Overall
	#6	Document stores

Score	3.10
Rank	#100	Overall
	#7	Graph DBMS
	#4	RDF stores

Score	423.96
Rank	#5	Overall
	#1	Document stores

Score	0.71
Rank	#231	Overall
	#9	RDF stores

Website

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

www.ontotext.com

www.mongodb.com

rdf4j.org

Technical documentation

firebase.google.com/docs/database

graphdb.ontotext.com/documentation

www.mongodb.com/docs/manual

rdf4j.org/documentation

Social network pages

Developer

Google

acquired by Google 2014

Ontotext

MongoDB, Inc

Since 2016 officially forked into an Eclipse project, former developer was Aduna Software.

Initial release

2012

2000

2009

2004

Current release

10.4, October 2023

6.0.7, June 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Some plugins of GraphDB Workbench are open sourced

Open Source

MongoDB Inc.'s Server Side Public License v1. Prior versions were published under GNU AGPL v3.0. Commercial licenses are also available.

Open Source

Eclipse Distribution License (EDL), v1.0.

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

MongoDB available as DBaaS (MongoDB Atlas)

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

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

MongoDB Atlas: Global multi-cloud database with unmatched data distribution and mobility across AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, built-in automation for resource and workload optimization, and so much more.

Implementation language

Java

C++

Java

Server operating systems

hosted

All OS with a Java VM
Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Linux
OS X
Unix
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

schema-free and OWL/RDFS-schema support; RDF shapes

schema-free

Although schema-free, documents of the same collection often follow the same structure. Optionally impose all or part of a schema by defining a JSON schema.

yes

RDF Schemas

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

string, integer, double, decimal, boolean, date, object_id, geospatial

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.

Secondary indexes

yes

yes, supports real-time synchronization and indexing in SOLR/Elastic search/Lucene and GeoSPARQL geometry data indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

stored SPARQL accessed as SQL using Apache Calcite through JDBC/ODBC

Read-only SQL queries via the MongoDB Atlas SQL Interface

APIs and other access methods

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

GeoSPARQL
GraphQL
GraphQL Federation
Java API
JDBC
RDF4J API
RDFS
RIO
Sail API
Sesame REST HTTP Protocol
SPARQL 1.1

GraphQL
HTTP REST
Prisma
proprietary protocol using JSON

Java API
RIO

RDF Input/Output
Sail API
SeRQL

Sesame RDF Query Language
Sesame REST HTTP Protocol
SPARQL

Supported programming languages

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

.Net
C#
Clojure
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

Actionscript

unofficial driver
C
C#
C++
Clojure

unofficial driver
ColdFusion

unofficial driver
D

unofficial driver
Dart

unofficial driver
Delphi

unofficial driver
Erlang
Go
Groovy

unofficial driver
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Kotlin
Lisp

unofficial driver
Lua

unofficial driver
MatLab

unofficial driver
Perl
PHP
PowerShell

unofficial driver
Prolog

unofficial driver
Python
R

unofficial driver
Ruby
Rust
Scala
Smalltalk

unofficial driver
Swift

Java
PHP
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

limited functionality with using 'rules'

well-defined plugin interfaces; JavaScript server-side extensibility

JavaScript

yes

Triggers

Callbacks are triggered when data changes

yes

in MongoDB Atlas only

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Sharding

Partitioned by hashed, ranged, or zoned sharding keys. Live resharding allows users to change their shard keys as an online operation with zero downtime.

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication

Multi-Source deployments with MongoDB Atlas Global Clusters
Source-replica replication

none

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

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, Eventual consistency (configurable in cluster mode per master or individual client request)

Eventual Consistency

can be individually decided for each read operation
Immediate Consistency

default behaviour

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Constraint checking

typically not used, however similar functionality with DBRef possible

Transaction concepts

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

yes

ACID

Multi-document ACID Transactions with snapshot isolation

ACID

Isolation support depends on the API used

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

optional, enabled by default

yes

in-memory storage is supported as well

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

In-memory storage engine introduced with MongoDB version 3.2

User concepts

Access control

yes, based on authentication and database rules

Default Basic authentication through RDF4J client, or via Java when run with cURL, default token-based in the Workbench or via Rest API, optional access through OpenID or Kerberos single sign-on.

Access rights for users and roles

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Ontotext GraphDB is a semantic database engine that allows organizations to build...
» more

MongoDB provides an integrated suite of cloud database and data services to accelerate...
» more

Competitive advantages

GraphDB allows you to link text and data in big knowledge graphs. It’s easy to experiment...
» more

Built around the flexible document data model and unified API, MongoDB is a developer...
» more

Typical application scenarios

Metadata enrichment and management, linked data publishing, semantic inferencing...
» more

AI-enriched intelligent apps (Continental, Telefonica, Iron Mountain) Internet of...
» more

Key customers

GraphDB provides a platform for building next-generation AI and Knowledge Graph...
» more

ADP, Adobe, Amadeus, AstraZeneca, Auto Trader, Barclays, BBVA, Bosch, Cisco, CERN,...
» more

Market metrics

GraphDB is the most utilized semantic triplestore for mission-critical enterprise...
» more

Hundreds of millions downloads, over 150,000+ Atlas clusters provisioned every month...
» more

Licensing and pricing models

GraphDB Free is a non-commercial version and is free to use. GraphDB Enterprise edition...
» more

MongoDB database server: Server-Side Public License (SSPL) . Commercial licenses...
» more

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3 April 2024

Using GraphDB’s Natural Language Interface to Talk with Your Content
29 March 2024

Choosing A Graph Data Model to Best Serve Your Use Case
27 March 2024

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and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.