DBMS > Firebase Realtime Database vs. GridDB vs. IBM Db2 vs. Neo4j vs. OpenSearch

System Properties Comparison Firebase Realtime Database vs. GridDB vs. IBM Db2 vs. Neo4j vs. OpenSearch

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.

Scalable in-memory time series database optimized for IoT and Big Data

Common in IBM host environments, 2 different versions for host and Windows/Linux

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

A distributed, RESTful search and analytics engine forked from Elasticsearch and based on Apache Lucene

Primary database model

Document store

Time Series DBMS

Relational DBMS

Since Version 10.5 support for JSON/BSON documents compatible with MongoDB

Graph DBMS

Search engine

Secondary database models

Key-value store
Relational DBMS

Document store
RDF store

in Db2 LUW (Linux, Unix, Windows)
Spatial DBMS

with Db2 Spatial Extender

Vector DBMS

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

Score	14.29
Rank	#39	Overall
	#6	Document stores

Score	1.95
Rank	#128	Overall
	#10	Time Series DBMS

Score	128.46
Rank	#8	Overall
	#5	Relational DBMS

Score	44.46
Rank	#23	Overall
	#1	Graph DBMS

Score	16.36
Rank	#37	Overall
	#4	Search engines

Website

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

griddb.net

www.ibm.com/products/db2

neo4j.com

github.com/opensearch-project
opensearch.org

Technical documentation

firebase.google.com/docs/database

docs.griddb.net

www.ibm.com/docs/en/db2

neo4j.com/docs

opensearch.org/docs/latest

Developer

Google

acquired by Google 2014

Toshiba Corporation

IBM

Neo4j, Inc.

Amazon Web Services

Initial release

2012

2013

1983

host version

2007

2021

Current release

5.1, August 2022

12.1, October 2016

5.19, April 2024

2.5.0, January 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

AGPL version 3 and Apache License, version 2.0 , commercial license (standard and advanced editions) also available

commercial

free version is available

Open Source

GPL version3, commercial licenses available

Open Source

Apache Version 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.

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

Aiven for OpenSearch: Fully managed open source search and analytics suite. Out-of-the-box integrations get you up and running in a couple of clicks.

Implementation language

C++

C and C++

Java, Scala

Java

Server operating systems

hosted

Linux

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
Solaris
Windows
z/OS

Linux

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

All OS with a Java VM

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free and schema-optional

schema-free

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

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

numerical, string, blob, geometry, boolean, timestamp

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

pluggable indexing subsystem, by default Apache Lucene

yes

All search fields are automatically indexed

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL92, SQL-like TQL (Toshiba Query Language)

yes

SQL-like query language

APIs and other access methods

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary protocol
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

ADO.NET
JDBC
JSON style queries

MongoDB compatible
ODBC
XQuery

Bolt protocol
Cypher query language
Java API
Neo4j-OGM

Object Graph Mapper
RESTful HTTP API
Spring Data Neo4j
TinkerPop 3

Java API
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Supported programming languages

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

C
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

C
C#
C++
Cobol
Delphi
Fortran
Java
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Visual Basic

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

Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby

Elasticsearch client

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

limited functionality with using 'rules'

yes

User defined Procedures and Functions

yes

Triggers

Callbacks are triggered when data changes

yes

via event handler

yes

by using the 'percolation' feature

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

only with Windows/Unix/Linux Version

yes using Neo4j Fabric

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Source-replica replication

yes

with separate tools (MQ, InfoSphere)

Causal Clustering using Raft protocol

available in in Enterprise Version only

yes

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Connector for using GridDB as an input source and output destination for Hadoop MapReduce jobs

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 within container, eventual consistency across containers

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

Eventual Consistency

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

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Relationships in graphs

Transaction concepts

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

yes

ACID at container level

ACID

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.

yes

User concepts

Access control

yes, based on authentication and database rules

Access rights for users can be defined per database

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

GridDB is a highly scalable, in-memory time series database optimized for IoT and...
» more

Neo4j delivers graph technology that has been battle tested for performance and scale...
» more

OpenSearch is a highly scalable and extensible open-source software suite for search,...
» more

Competitive advantages

1. Optimized for IoT Equipped with Toshiba's proprietary key-container data model...
» more

Neo4j is the market leader, graph database category creator, and the most widely...
» more

Distributed as fully open source under Apache License, Version 2.0 (ALv2), OpenSearch...
» more

Typical application scenarios

Factory IoT, Automative Industry, Energy, BEMS, Smart Community, Monitoring system.
» more

Real-Time Recommendations Master Data Management Identity and Access Management Network...
» more

The OpenSearch platform is used across a broad range of search , analytics, and observability...
» more

Key customers

Denso International [see use case ] An Electric Power company [see use case ] Ishinomaki...
» more

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

Market metrics

GitHub trending repository
» more

Neo4j boasts the world's largest graph database ecosystem with more than 140 million...
» more

Licensing and pricing models

Open Source license (AGPL v3 & Apache v2) Commercial license (subscription)
» more

GPL v3 license that can be used all the places where you might use MySQL. Neo4j Commercial...
» more

The OpenSearch Project offers open source software licensed under Apache License...
» more

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