DBMS > FoundationDB vs. Neo4j vs. Oracle NoSQL vs. PouchDB vs. SQLite

System Properties Comparison FoundationDB vs. Neo4j vs. Oracle NoSQL vs. PouchDB vs. SQLite

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Created as commercial project in 2013, FoundationDB has been acquired by Apple in March 2015 and was withdrawn from the market.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.

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

A multi-model, scalable, distributed NoSQL database, designed to provide highly reliable, flexible, and available data management across a configurable set of storage nodes

JavaScript DBMS with an API inspired by CouchDB

Widely used embeddable, in-process RDBMS

Primary database model

Document store

supported via specific layer
Key-value store
Relational DBMS

supported via specific SQL-layer

Graph DBMS

Document store
Key-value store
Relational DBMS

Document store

Relational DBMS

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

Score	1.03
Rank	#190	Overall
	#31	Document stores
	#28	Key-value stores
	#89	Relational DBMS

Score	44.46
Rank	#23	Overall
	#1	Graph DBMS

Score	2.95
Rank	#100	Overall
	#17	Document stores
	#17	Key-value stores
	#50	Relational DBMS

Score	2.28
Rank	#115	Overall
	#21	Document stores

Score	114.32
Rank	#10	Overall
	#7	Relational DBMS

Website

github.com/apple/foundationdb

neo4j.com

www.oracle.com/database/nosql/technologies/nosql

pouchdb.com

www.sqlite.org

Technical documentation

apple.github.io/foundationdb

neo4j.com/docs

docs.oracle.com/en/database/other-databases/nosql-database/index.html

pouchdb.com/guides

www.sqlite.org/docs.html

Developer

FoundationDB

Neo4j, Inc.

Oracle

Apache Software Foundation

Dwayne Richard Hipp

Initial release

2013

2007

2011

2012

2000

Current release

6.2.28, November 2020

5.19, April 2024

23.3, December 2023

7.1.1, June 2019

3.45.3 (15 April 2024), April 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

GPL version3, commercial licenses available

Open Source

Proprietary for Enterprise Edition (Oracle Database EE license has Oracle NoSQL database EE covered: details)

Open Source

Public Domain

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, Scala

Java

JavaScript

Server operating systems

Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux

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

Linux
Solaris SPARC/x86

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

server-less

Data scheme

schema-free

some layers support schemas

schema-free and schema-optional

Support Fixed schema and Schema-less deployment with the ability to interoperate between them.

schema-free

yes

dynamic column types

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

some layers support typing

yes

optional

yes

not rigid because of 'dynamic typing' concept.

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

yes

via views

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

supported in specific SQL layer only

SQL-like DML and DDL statements

yes

SQL-92 is not fully supported

APIs and other access methods

Bolt protocol
Cypher query language
Java API
Neo4j-OGM

Object Graph Mapper
RESTful HTTP API
Spring Data Neo4j
TinkerPop 3

RESTful HTTP API

HTTP REST

only for PouchDB Server
JavaScript API

ADO.NET

inofficial driver
JDBC

inofficial driver
ODBC

inofficial driver

Supported programming languages

.Net
C
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
PHP
Python
Ruby
Swift

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

C
C#
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

JavaScript

Actionscript
Ada
Basic
C
C#
C++
D
Delphi
Forth
Fortran
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Lisp
Lua
MatLab
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
PL/SQL
Python
R
Ruby
Scala
Scheme
Smalltalk
Tcl

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

in SQL-layer only

yes

User defined Procedures and Functions

View functions in JavaScript

Triggers

yes

via event handler

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

yes using Neo4j Fabric

Sharding

with a proxy-based framework, named couchdb-lounge

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

Causal Clustering using Raft protocol

available in in Enterprise Version only

Electable source-replica replication per shard. Support distributed global deployment with Multi-region table feature

Multi-source replication

also with CouchDB databases
Source-replica replication

also with CouchDB databases

none

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

with Hadoop integration

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Linearizable consistency

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

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

depending on configuration

Eventual 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

configurable

ACID within a storage node (=shard)

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

via file-system locks

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

by using IndexedDB, WebSQL or LevelDB as backend

yes

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

off heap cache

yes

User concepts

Access control

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

Access rights for users and roles

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

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Competitive advantages

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Typical application scenarios

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Key customers

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Market metrics

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Licensing and pricing models

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