DBMS > Google Cloud Datastore vs. Neo4j vs. Snowflake vs. XTDB

System Properties Comparison Google Cloud Datastore vs. Neo4j vs. Snowflake vs. XTDB

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Automatically scaling NoSQL Database as a Service (DBaaS) on the Google Cloud Platform

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

Cloud-based data warehousing service for structured and semi-structured data

A general purpose database with bitemporal SQL and Datalog and graph queries

Primary database model

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

Score	4.49
Rank	#79	Overall
	#12	Document stores

Score	44.47
Rank	#23	Overall
	#1	Graph DBMS

Score	123.20
Rank	#9	Overall
	#6	Relational DBMS

Score	0.09
Rank	#351	Overall
	#47	Document stores

Website

cloud.google.com/datastore

neo4j.com

www.snowflake.com

github.com/xtdb/xtdb
www.xtdb.com

Technical documentation

cloud.google.com/datastore/docs

neo4j.com/docs

docs.snowflake.net/manuals/index.html

www.xtdb.com/docs

Developer

Google

Neo4j, Inc.

Snowflake Computing Inc.

Juxt Ltd.

Initial release

2008

2007

2014

2019

Current release

5.19, April 2024

1.19, September 2021

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

GPL version3, commercial licenses available

commercial

Open Source

MIT License

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.

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

Implementation language

Java, Scala

Clojure

Server operating systems

hosted

Linux

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

hosted

All OS with a Java 8 (and higher) VM
Linux

Data scheme

schema-free

schema-free and schema-optional

yes

support of semi-structured data formats (JSON, XML, Avro)

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes, details here

yes

yes, extensible-data-notation format

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

SQL-like query language (GQL)

yes

limited SQL, making use of Apache Calcite

APIs and other access methods

gRPC (using protocol buffers) API
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Bolt protocol
Cypher query language
Java API
Neo4j-OGM

Object Graph Mapper
RESTful HTTP API
Spring Data Neo4j
TinkerPop 3

CLI Client
JDBC
ODBC

HTTP REST
JDBC

Supported programming languages

.Net
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby

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

JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

Clojure
Java

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

using Google App Engine

yes

User defined Procedures and Functions

user defined functions

Triggers

Callbacks using the Google Apps Engine

yes

via event handler

similar concept for controling cloud resources

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

yes using Neo4j Fabric

yes

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication using Paxos

Causal Clustering using Raft protocol

available in in Enterprise Version only

yes

yes, each node contains all data

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

using Google Cloud Dataflow

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency or Eventual Consistency depending on type of query and configuration

Strong Consistency is default for entity lookups and queries within an Entity Group (but can instead be made eventually consistent). Other queries are always eventual consistent.

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

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

via ReferenceProperties or Ancestor paths

yes

Relationships in graphs

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

Serializable Isolation within Transactions, Read Committed outside of Transactions

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

yes, flexibel persistency by using storage technologies like Apache Kafka, RocksDB or LMDB

In-memory capabilities

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

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users, groups and roles based on Google Cloud Identity and Access Management (IAM)

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

Users with fine-grained authorization concept, user roles and pluggable authentication

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Neo4j delivers graph technology that has been battle tested for performance and scale...
» more

Competitive advantages

Neo4j is the market leader, graph database category creator, and the most widely...
» more

Typical application scenarios

Real-Time Recommendations Master Data Management Identity and Access Management Network...
» more

Key customers

Over 800 commercial customers and over 4300 startups use Neo4j. Flagship customers...
» more

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

News

This Week in Neo4j: Google Cloud, Analysis, Knowledge Graph, Relationships and more
20 April 2024

Announcing NODES 2024: Submit Your Talk
17 April 2024

ISO GQL: A Defining Moment in the History of Database Innovation
17 April 2024

This Week in Neo4j: Podcast, RAG, Neo4j Guide, ERP and more
13 April 2024

Neo4j Brings GraphRAG Capabilities for GenAI to Google Cloud
9 April 2024

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and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.