DBMS > GraphDB vs. HarperDB vs. MySQL vs. Neo4j vs. TinkerGraph

System Properties Comparison GraphDB vs. HarperDB vs. MySQL vs. Neo4j vs. TinkerGraph

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Enterprise-ready RDF and graph database with efficient reasoning, cluster and external index synchronization support. It supports also SQL JDBC access to Knowledge Graph and GraphQL over SPARQL.

Ultra-low latency distributed database with an intuitive REST API supporting NoSQL and SQL (including joins). Deployment of functions and databases simultaneously with a consolidated node-level architecture.

Widely used open source RDBMS

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

A lightweight, in-memory graph engine that serves as a reference implementation of the TinkerPop3 API

Primary database model

Graph DBMS
RDF store

Document store

Relational DBMS

Key/Value like access via memcached API

Graph DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	3.25
Rank	#91	Overall
	#7	Graph DBMS
	#4	RDF stores

Score	0.60
Rank	#244	Overall
	#38	Document stores

Score	1061.34
Rank	#2	Overall
	#2	Relational DBMS

Score	44.89
Rank	#21	Overall
	#1	Graph DBMS

Score	0.13
Rank	#345	Overall
	#35	Graph DBMS

Website

tinkerpop.apache.org/docs/current/reference/#tinkergraph-gremlin

Technical documentation

graphdb.ontotext.com/documentation

docs.harperdb.io/docs

dev.mysql.com/doc

neo4j.com/docs

Social network pages

Developer

Ontotext

HarperDB

Oracle

since 2010, originally MySQL AB, then Sun

Neo4j, Inc.

Initial release

2000

2017

1995

2007

2009

Current release

10.4, October 2023

3.1, August 2021

8.4.0, April 2024

5.20, May 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Some plugins of GraphDB Workbench are open sourced

commercial

free community edition available

Open Source

GPL version 2. Commercial licenses with extended functionallity are available

Open Source

GPL version3, commercial licenses available

Open Source

Apache 2.0

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.

Aiven for MySQL: Fully managed MySQL, deployable in the cloud of your choice, with seamless integrations and lightning-fast setup.

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

Implementation language

Java

Node.js

C and C++

Java, Scala

Java

Server operating systems

All OS with a Java VM
Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
OS X

FreeBSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Linux

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

Data scheme

schema-free and OWL/RDFS-schema support; RDF shapes

dynamic schema

yes

schema-free and schema-optional

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

JSON data types

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, supports real-time synchronization and indexing in SOLR/Elastic search/Lucene and GeoSPARQL geometry data indexes

yes

pluggable indexing subsystem, by default Apache Lucene

SQL

Support of SQL

stored SPARQL accessed as SQL using Apache Calcite through JDBC/ODBC

SQL-like data manipulation statements

yes

with proprietary extensions

APIs and other access methods

GeoSPARQL
GraphQL
GraphQL Federation
Java API
JDBC
RDF4J API
RDFS
RIO
Sail API
Sesame REST HTTP Protocol
SPARQL 1.1

JDBC
ODBC
React Hooks
RESTful HTTP/JSON API
WebSocket

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary native API

Bolt protocol
Cypher query language
Java API
Neo4j-OGM

Object Graph Mapper
RESTful HTTP API
Spring Data Neo4j
TinkerPop 3

TinkerPop 3

Supported programming languages

.Net
C#
Clojure
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

.Net
C
C#
C++
ColdFusion
D
Dart
Delphi
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Lisp
MatLab
Objective C
Perl
PHP
PowerShell
Prolog
Python
R
Ruby
Rust
Scala
Swift

Ada
C
C#
C++
D
Delphi
Eiffel
Erlang
Haskell
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl

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

Groovy
Java

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

well-defined plugin interfaces; JavaScript server-side extensibility

Custom Functions

since release 3.1

yes

proprietary syntax

yes

User defined Procedures and Functions

Triggers

yes

via event handler

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

A table resides as a whole on one (or more) nodes in a cluster

horizontal partitioning, sharding with MySQL Cluster or MySQL Fabric

yes using Neo4j Fabric

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication

yes

the nodes on which a table resides can be defined

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

Causal Clustering using Raft protocol

available in in Enterprise Version only

none

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency, Eventual consistency (configurable in cluster mode per master or individual client request)

Immediate Consistency

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

none

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Constraint checking

yes

not for MyISAM storage engine

yes

Relationships in graphs

yes

Relationships in graphs

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

Atomic execution of specific operations

ACID

not for MyISAM storage engine

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

table locks or row locks depending on storage engine

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

yes, using LMDB

yes

optional

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

User concepts

Access control

Default Basic authentication through RDF4J client, or via Java when run with cURL, default token-based in the Workbench or via Rest API, optional access through OpenID or Kerberos single sign-on.

Access rights for users and roles

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

no user groups or roles

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

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Ontotext GraphDB is a semantic database engine that allows organizations to build...
» more

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

Competitive advantages

GraphDB allows you to link text and data in big knowledge graphs. It’s easy to experiment...
» more

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

Typical application scenarios

Metadata enrichment and management, linked data publishing, semantic inferencing...
» more

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

Key customers

GraphDB provides a platform for building next-generation AI and Knowledge Graph...
» more

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

Market metrics

GraphDB is the most utilized semantic triplestore for mission-critical enterprise...
» more

Neo4j boasts the world's largest graph database ecosystem with more than 140 million...
» more

Licensing and pricing models

GraphDB Free is a non-commercial version and is free to use. GraphDB Enterprise edition...
» more

GPL v3 license that can be used all the places where you might use MySQL. Neo4j Commercial...
» more

News

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6 June 2024

Matching Skills and Candidates with Graph RAG
31 May 2024

A Triple Store RAG Retriever
29 May 2024

Integrating GraphDB with Relational Database Systems
23 May 2024

Understanding the Graph Center of Excellence
17 May 2024

This Week in Neo4j: Podcast, Testing, Knowledge Graph, GenAI and more
8 June 2024

Neo4j and Snowflake Bring Graph Data Science Into the AI Data Cloud
4 June 2024

RDF vs. Property Graphs: Choosing the Right Approach for Implementing a Knowledge Graph
4 June 2024

This Week in Neo4j: Importing Data, NODES, GenAI, Going Meta and more
1 June 2024

openCypher Will Pave the Road to GQL for Cypher Implementers
22 May 2024

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