DBMS > Firebase Realtime Database vs. GridDB vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. Neo4j vs. SAP HANA

System Properties Comparison Firebase Realtime Database vs. GridDB vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. Neo4j vs. SAP HANA

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

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

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

In-memory, column based data store. Available as appliance or cloud service

Primary database model

Secondary database models

Key-value store
Relational DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS

with SAP Hana, Enterprise Edition
Spatial 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	824.29
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	44.46
Rank	#23	Overall
	#1	Graph DBMS

Score	44.69
Rank	#22	Overall
	#16	Relational DBMS

Website

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

griddb.net

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

neo4j.com

www.sap.com/products/hana.html

Technical documentation

firebase.google.com/docs/database

docs.griddb.net

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

neo4j.com/docs

help.sap.com/hana

Developer

Google

acquired by Google 2014

Toshiba Corporation

Microsoft

Neo4j, Inc.

SAP

Initial release

2012

2013

1989

2007

2010

Current release

5.1, August 2022

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

5.19, April 2024

2.0 SPS07 (April 4, 2023), April 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

restricted free version is available

Open Source

GPL version3, commercial licenses available

commercial

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

also available as a cloud based 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

C++

Java, Scala

Server operating systems

hosted

Linux

Linux
Windows

Linux

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

Appliance or cloud-service

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free and schema-optional

yes

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.

yes

Secondary indexes

yes

pluggable indexing subsystem, by default Apache Lucene

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL92, SQL-like TQL (Toshiba Query Language)

yes

APIs and other access methods

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary protocol
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

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

JDBC
ODBC

Supported programming languages

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

C
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
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

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

limited functionality with using 'rules'

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

yes

User defined Procedures and Functions

SQLScript, R

Triggers

Callbacks are triggered when data changes

yes

via event handler

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

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

yes using Neo4j Fabric

yes

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Source-replica replication

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

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

Immediate Consistency

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

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Relationships in graphs

yes

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)

yes

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

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

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

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

News

This Week in Neo4j: Podcast, GraphRAG, GraphQL, Chatbot and more
18 May 2024

Neo4j Joins the Connect with Confluent Partner Program
16 May 2024

10 Inspiring Projects to Spark Your NODES 2024 Presentation
15 May 2024

New Security Feature in Neo4j Aura: Customer Managed Keys
15 May 2024

Safeguarding Elections: How Graph Technology Powers Groundbreaking Research on Political Ads
13 May 2024

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