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DBMS > Firebase Realtime Database vs. Lovefield vs. Neo4j vs. Sphinx

System Properties Comparison Firebase Realtime Database vs. Lovefield vs. Neo4j vs. Sphinx

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines
NameFirebase Realtime Database  Xexclude from comparisonLovefield  Xexclude from comparisonNeo4j  Xexclude from comparisonSphinx  Xexclude from comparison
DescriptionCloud-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 JavaScriptScalable, ACID-compliant graph database designed with a high-performance distributed cluster architecture, available in self-hosted and cloud offeringsOpen source search engine for searching in data from different sources, e.g. relational databases
Primary database modelDocument storeRelational DBMSGraph DBMSSearch engine
DB-Engines Ranking infomeasures the popularity of database management systemsranking trend
Trend Chart
Score14.29
Rank#39  Overall
#6  Document stores
Score0.29
Rank#293  Overall
#133  Relational DBMS
Score44.46
Rank#23  Overall
#1  Graph DBMS
Score5.98
Rank#56  Overall
#5  Search engines
Websitefirebase.google.com/­products/­realtime-databasegoogle.github.io/­lovefieldneo4j.comsphinxsearch.com
Technical documentationfirebase.google.com/­docs/­databasegithub.com/­google/­lovefield/­blob/­master/­docs/­spec_index.mdneo4j.com/­docssphinxsearch.com/­docs
DeveloperGoogle infoacquired by Google 2014GoogleNeo4j, Inc.Sphinx Technologies Inc.
Initial release2012201420072001
Current release2.1.12, February 20175.20, May 20243.5.1, February 2023
License infoCommercial or Open SourcecommercialOpen Source infoApache 2.0Open Source infoGPL version3, commercial licenses availableOpen Source infoGPL version 2, commercial licence available
Cloud-based only infoOnly available as a cloud serviceyesnonono
DBaaS offerings (sponsored links) infoDatabase 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.
Implementation languageJavaScriptJava, ScalaC++
Server operating systemshostedserver-less, requires a JavaScript environment (browser, Node.js) infotested with Chrome, Firefox, IE, SafariLinux infoCan also be used server-less as embedded Java database.
OS X
Solaris
Windows
FreeBSD
Linux
NetBSD
OS X
Solaris
Windows
Data schemeschema-freeyesschema-free and schema-optionalyes
Typing infopredefined data types such as float or dateyesyesyesno
XML support infoSome form of processing data in XML format, e.g. support for XML data structures, and/or support for XPath, XQuery or XSLT.nono
Secondary indexesyesyesyes infopluggable indexing subsystem, by default Apache Luceneyes infofull-text index on all search fields
SQL infoSupport of SQLnoSQL-like query language infovia JavaScript builder patternnoSQL-like query language (SphinxQL)
APIs and other access methodsAndroid
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API
Bolt protocol
Cypher query language
Java API
Neo4j-OGM infoObject Graph Mapper
RESTful HTTP API
Spring Data Neo4j
TinkerPop 3
Proprietary protocol
Supported programming languagesJava
JavaScript
Objective-C
JavaScript.Net
Clojure
Elixir
Go
Groovy
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala
C++ infounofficial client library
Java
Perl infounofficial client library
PHP
Python
Ruby infounofficial client library
Server-side scripts infoStored procedureslimited functionality with using 'rules'noyes infoUser defined Procedures and Functionsno
TriggersCallbacks are triggered when data changesUsing read-only observersyes infovia event handlerno
Partitioning methods infoMethods for storing different data on different nodesnoneyes using Neo4j FabricSharding infoPartitioning is done manually, search queries against distributed index is supported
Replication methods infoMethods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodesnoneCausal Clustering using Raft protocol infoavailable in in Enterprise Version onlynone
MapReduce infoOffers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methodsnononono
Consistency concepts infoMethods to ensure consistency in a distributed systemEventual Consistency infoif the client is offline
Immediate Consistency infoif the client is online
Causal and Eventual Consistency configurable in Causal Cluster setup
Immediate Consistency in stand-alone mode
Foreign keys infoReferential integritynoyesyes infoRelationships in graphsno
Transaction concepts infoSupport to ensure data integrity after non-atomic manipulations of datayesACIDACIDno
Concurrency infoSupport for concurrent manipulation of datayesyesyesyes
Durability infoSupport for making data persistentyesyes, by using IndexedDB or the cloud service Firebase Realtime Databaseyesyes infoThe original contents of fields are not stored in the Sphinx index.
In-memory capabilities infoIs there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.yes infousing MemoryDB
User concepts infoAccess controlyes, based on authentication and database rulesnoUsers, roles and permissions. Pluggable authentication with supported standards (LDAP, Active Directory, Kerberos)no
More information provided by the system vendor
Firebase Realtime DatabaseLovefieldNeo4jSphinx
Specific characteristicsNeo4j delivers graph technology that has been battle tested for performance and scale...
» more
Competitive advantagesNeo4j is the market leader, graph database category creator, and the most widely...
» more
Typical application scenariosReal-Time Recommendations Master Data Management Identity and Access Management Network...
» more
Key customersOver 800 commercial customers and over 4300 startups use Neo4j. Flagship customers...
» more
Market metricsNeo4j boasts the world's largest graph database ecosystem with more than 140 million...
» more
Licensing and pricing modelsGPL v3 license that can be used all the places where you might use MySQL. Neo4j Commercial...
» more
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