DBMS > FoundationDB vs. H2 vs. HyperSQL vs. Neo4j vs. Oracle

System Properties Comparison FoundationDB vs. H2 vs. HyperSQL vs. Neo4j vs. Oracle

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Created as commercial project in 2013, FoundationDB has been acquired by Apple in March 2015 and was withdrawn from the market. As a consequence, the product was removed from the DB-Engines ranking. In April 2018, Apple open-sourced FoundationDB and it therefore reappears in the ranking.

Description

Ordered key-value store. Core features are complimented by layers.

Full-featured RDBMS with a small footprint, either embedded into a Java application or used as a database server.

Multithreaded, transactional RDBMS written in Java

also known as HSQLDB

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

Widely used RDBMS

Primary database model

Document store

supported via specific layer
Key-value store
Relational DBMS

supported via specific SQL-layer

Relational DBMS

Graph DBMS

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Spatial DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS

with Oracle Spatial and Graph
RDF store

with Oracle Spatial and Graph
Spatial DBMS

with Oracle Spatial and Graph
Vector DBMS

since Oracle 23

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

Score	1.07
Rank	#188	Overall
	#31	Document stores
	#28	Key-value stores
	#86	Relational DBMS

Score	8.22
Rank	#50	Overall
	#32	Relational DBMS

Score	3.90
Rank	#85	Overall
	#46	Relational DBMS

Score	44.47
Rank	#23	Overall
	#1	Graph DBMS

Score	1234.27
Rank	#1	Overall
	#1	Relational DBMS

Website

github.com/apple/foundationdb

www.h2database.com

hsqldb.org

neo4j.com

www.oracle.com/database

Technical documentation

apple.github.io/foundationdb

www.h2database.com/html/main.html

hsqldb.org/web/hsqlDocsFrame.html

neo4j.com/docs

docs.oracle.com/en/database

Developer

FoundationDB

Thomas Mueller

Neo4j, Inc.

Oracle

Initial release

2013

2005

2001

2007

1980

Current release

6.2.28, November 2020

2.2.220, July 2023

2.7.2, June 2023

5.19, April 2024

23c, September 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

dual-licence (Mozilla public license, Eclipse public license)

Open Source

based on BSD license

Open Source

GPL version3, commercial licenses available

commercial

restricted free version is available

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

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.

Implementation language

C++

Java

Java, Scala

C and C++

Server operating systems

Linux
OS X
Windows

All OS with a Java VM

Embedded (into Java applications) and Client-Server operating modes

Linux

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

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows
z/OS

Data scheme

schema-free

some layers support schemas

yes

schema-free and schema-optional

yes

Schemaless in JSON and XML columns

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

some layers support typing

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

supported in specific SQL layer only

yes

with proprietary extensions

APIs and other access methods

JDBC
ODBC

HTTP API

JDBC via HTTP
JDBC
ODBC

Bolt protocol
Cypher query language
Java API
Neo4j-OGM

Object Graph Mapper
RESTful HTTP API
Spring Data Neo4j
TinkerPop 3

JDBC
ODBC
ODP.NET
Oracle Call Interface (OCI)

Supported programming languages

.Net
C
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
PHP
Python
Ruby
Swift

Java

All languages supporting JDBC/ODBC
Java

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

C
C#
C++
Clojure
Cobol
Delphi
Eiffel
Erlang
Fortran
Groovy
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Lisp
Objective C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Scala
Tcl
Visual Basic

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

in SQL-layer only

Java Stored Procedures and User-Defined Functions

Java, SQL

yes

User defined Procedures and Functions

PL/SQL

also stored procedures in Java possible

Triggers

yes

via event handler

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

none

yes using Neo4j Fabric

Sharding, horizontal partitioning

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

With clustering: 2 database servers on different computers operate on identical copies of a database

none

Causal Clustering using Raft protocol

available in in Enterprise Version only

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

can be realized in PL/SQL

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Linearizable consistency

Immediate Consistency

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

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

in SQL-layer only

yes

Relationships in graphs

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

isolation level can be parameterized

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

yes, multi-version concurrency control (MVCC)

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

Version 12c introduced the new option 'Oracle Database In-Memory'

User concepts

Access control

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

More information provided by the system vendor

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Key customers

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Market metrics

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Licensing and pricing models

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