DBMS > Firebird vs. MongoDB vs. Neo4j vs. TigerGraph vs. Vertica

System Properties Comparison Firebird vs. MongoDB vs. Neo4j vs. TigerGraph vs. Vertica

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Firebird is an open source RDBMS forked from Borland's InterBase

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

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

A complete, distributed, parallel graph computing platform supporting web-scale data analytics in real-time

Cloud or off-cloud analytical database and query engine for structured and semi-structured streaming and batch data. Machine learning platform with built-in algorithms, data preparation capabilities, and model evaluation and management via SQL or Python.

Primary database model

Column oriented

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

Spatial DBMS
Time Series DBMS

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

Score	20.82
Rank	#30	Overall
	#18	Relational DBMS

Score	421.65
Rank	#5	Overall
	#1	Document stores

Score	44.46
Rank	#23	Overall
	#1	Graph DBMS

Score	1.83
Rank	#139	Overall
	#13	Graph DBMS

Score	10.68
Rank	#43	Overall
	#27	Relational DBMS

Website

Technical documentation

www.firebirdsql.org/en/reference-manuals

www.mongodb.com/docs/manual

neo4j.com/docs

docs.tigergraph.com

vertica.com/documentation

Developer

Firebird Foundation

MongoDB, Inc

Neo4j, Inc.

OpenText

previously Micro Focus and Hewlett Packard

Initial release

2000

As fork of Borland's InterBase

2009

2007

2017

2005

Current release

5.0.0, January 2024

6.0.7, June 2023

5.19, April 2024

12.0.3, January 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Initial Developer's Public License

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

GPL version3, commercial licenses available

commercial

Limited community edition free

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

MongoDB available as DBaaS (MongoDB Atlas)

on-premises, all major clouds - Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform and containers

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.

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

Implementation language

C and C++

C++

Java, Scala

C++

Server operating systems

AIX
FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
server-less

Firebird Embedded Server
Solaris
Unix
Windows

Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Linux

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

Linux

Data scheme

yes

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.

schema-free and schema-optional

yes

Yes, but also semi-structure/unstructured data storage, and complex hierarchical data (like Parquet) stored and/or queried.

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

pluggable indexing subsystem, by default Apache Lucene

No Indexes Required. Different internal optimization strategy, but same functionality included.

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

Read-only SQL queries via the MongoDB Atlas SQL Interface

SQL-like query language (GSQL)

Full 1999 standard plus machine learning, time series and geospatial. Over 650 functions.

APIs and other access methods

ADO.NET
C/C++ API
JDBC

Jaybird
ODBC
OLE DB

GraphQL
HTTP REST
Prisma
proprietary protocol using JSON

Bolt protocol
Cypher query language
Java API
Neo4j-OGM

Object Graph Mapper
RESTful HTTP API
Spring Data Neo4j
TinkerPop 3

GSQL (TigerGraph Query Language)
Kafka
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

ADO.NET
JDBC
Kafka Connector
ODBC
RESTful HTTP API
Spark Connector
vSQL

character-based, interactive, front-end utility

Supported programming languages

C
C#
C++
Delphi
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Lua
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

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

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

C++
Java

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

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

PSQL

JavaScript

yes

User defined Procedures and Functions

yes

yes, PostgreSQL PL/pgSQL, with minor differences

Triggers

yes

in MongoDB Atlas only

yes

via event handler

yes, called Custom Alerts

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.

yes using Neo4j Fabric

horizontal partitioning, hierarchical partitioning

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Source-replica replication

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

Causal Clustering using Raft protocol

available in in Enterprise Version only

Multi-source replication

One, or more copies of data replicated across nodes, or object-store used for repository.

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

Bi-directional Spark integration

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency

can be individually decided for each read operation
Immediate Consistency

default behaviour

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

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

typically not used, however similar functionality with DBRef possible

yes

Relationships in graphs

yes

Relationships in graphs

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

Multi-document ACID Transactions with snapshot isolation

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Features a multi-generational MVCC architecture, readers do not block writers

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

optional, enabled by default

yes

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

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

Access rights for users and roles

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

Role-based access control

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard; supports Kerberos, LDAP, Ident and hash

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

MongoDB provides an integrated suite of cloud database and data services to accelerate...
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Neo4j delivers graph technology that has been battle tested for performance and scale...
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Deploy-anywhere database for large-scale analytical deployments. Deploy off-cloud,...
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Competitive advantages

Built around the flexible document data model and unified API, MongoDB is a developer...
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Neo4j is the market leader, graph database category creator, and the most widely...
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Fast, scalable, and capable of high concurrency. Separation of compute/storage leverages...
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Typical application scenarios

AI-enriched intelligent apps (Continental, Telefonica, Iron Mountain) Internet of...
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Real-Time Recommendations Master Data Management Identity and Access Management Network...
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Communication and network analytics, Embedded analytics, Fraud monitoring and Risk...
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Key customers

ADP, Adobe, Amadeus, AstraZeneca, Auto Trader, Barclays, BBVA, Bosch, Cisco, CERN,...
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Over 800 commercial customers and over 4300 startups use Neo4j. Flagship customers...
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Abiba Systems, Adform, adMarketplace, AmeriPride, Anritsu, AOL, Avito, Auckland Transport,...
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Market metrics

Hundreds of millions downloads, over 150,000+ Atlas clusters provisioned every month...
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Neo4j boasts the world's largest graph database ecosystem with more than 140 million...
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Licensing and pricing models

MongoDB database server: Server-Side Public License (SSPL) . Commercial licenses...
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GPL v3 license that can be used all the places where you might use MySQL. Neo4j Commercial...
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Cost-based models and subscription-based models are both available. One license is...
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