DBMS > Firebase Realtime Database vs. Lovefield vs. MySQL vs. Neo4j vs. Rockset

System Properties Comparison Firebase Realtime Database vs. Lovefield vs. MySQL vs. Neo4j vs. Rockset

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.

Embeddable relational database for web apps written in pure JavaScript

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

A scalable, reliable search and analytics service in the cloud, built on RocksDB

Primary database model

Document store

Relational DBMS

Key/Value like access via memcached API

Graph DBMS

Document store

Secondary database models

Document store
Spatial DBMS

Relational DBMS
Search engine

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

Score	14.29
Rank	#39	Overall
	#6	Document stores

Score	0.29
Rank	#293	Overall
	#133	Relational DBMS

Score	1083.74
Rank	#2	Overall
	#2	Relational DBMS

Score	44.46
Rank	#23	Overall
	#1	Graph DBMS

Score	0.79
Rank	#211	Overall
	#35	Document stores

Website

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

google.github.io/lovefield

www.mysql.com

neo4j.com

rockset.com

Technical documentation

firebase.google.com/docs/database

github.com/google/lovefield/blob/master/docs/spec_index.md

dev.mysql.com/doc

neo4j.com/docs

docs.rockset.com

Developer

Google

acquired by Google 2014

Google

Oracle

since 2010, originally MySQL AB, then Sun

Neo4j, Inc.

Rockset

Initial release

2012

2014

1995

2007

2019

Current release

2.1.12, February 2017

8.4.0, April 2024

5.20, May 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

GPL version 2. Commercial licenses with extended functionallity are available

Open Source

GPL version3, commercial licenses available

commercial

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

JavaScript

C and C++

Java, Scala

C++

Server operating systems

hosted

server-less, requires a JavaScript environment (browser, Node.js)

tested with Chrome, Firefox, IE, Safari

FreeBSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Linux

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

hosted

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free and schema-optional

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

dynamic typing

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

ingestion from XML files supported

Secondary indexes

yes

pluggable indexing subsystem, by default Apache Lucene

all fields are automatically indexed

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like query language

via JavaScript builder pattern

yes

with proprietary extensions

Read-only SQL queries, including JOINs

APIs and other access methods

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP 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

HTTP REST

Supported programming languages

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

JavaScript

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

Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

limited functionality with using 'rules'

yes

proprietary syntax

yes

User defined Procedures and Functions

Triggers

Callbacks are triggered when data changes

Using read-only observers

yes

via event handler

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

horizontal partitioning, sharding with MySQL Cluster or MySQL Fabric

yes using Neo4j Fabric

Automatic sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

none

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

Causal Clustering using Raft protocol

available in in Enterprise Version only

yes

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

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

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

Eventual Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

not for MyISAM storage engine

yes

Relationships in graphs

Transaction concepts

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

yes

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

yes, by using IndexedDB or the cloud service Firebase Realtime Database

yes

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

using MemoryDB

yes

User concepts

Access control

yes, based on authentication and database rules

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

no user groups or roles

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

Access rights for users and organizations can be defined via Rockset console

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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