DBMS > GraphDB vs. IBM Db2 vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. ObjectBox vs. RDF4J

System Properties Comparison GraphDB vs. IBM Db2 vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. ObjectBox vs. RDF4J

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.

Common in IBM host environments, 2 different versions for host and Windows/Linux

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

Extremely fast embedded database for small devices, IoT and Mobile

RDF4J is a Java framework for processing RDF data, supporting both memory-based and a disk-based storage.

Primary database model

Graph DBMS
RDF store

Relational DBMS

Since Version 10.5 support for JSON/BSON documents compatible with MongoDB

Relational DBMS

Object oriented DBMS

RDF store

Secondary database models

Document store
RDF store

in Db2 LUW (Linux, Unix, Windows)
Spatial DBMS

with Db2 Spatial Extender

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

Time Series DBMS

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

Score	3.32
Rank	#91	Overall
	#6	Graph DBMS
	#4	RDF stores

Score	128.46
Rank	#8	Overall
	#5	Relational DBMS

Score	824.29
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	1.20
Rank	#170	Overall
	#5	Object oriented DBMS

Score	0.69
Rank	#230	Overall
	#9	RDF stores

Website

www.ontotext.com

www.ibm.com/products/db2

www.microsoft.com/en-us/sql-server

objectbox.io

rdf4j.org

Technical documentation

graphdb.ontotext.com/documentation

www.ibm.com/docs/en/db2

learn.microsoft.com/en-US/sql/sql-server

docs.objectbox.io

rdf4j.org/documentation

Social network pages

Developer

Ontotext

IBM

Microsoft

ObjectBox Limited

Since 2016 officially forked into an Eclipse project, former developer was Aduna Software.

Initial release

2000

1983

host version

1989

2017

2004

Current release

10.4, October 2023

12.1, October 2016

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Some plugins of GraphDB Workbench are open sourced

commercial

free version is available

commercial

restricted free version is available

Open Source

Apache License 2.0

Open Source

Eclipse Distribution License (EDL), v1.0.

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

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Implementation language

Java

C and C++

C++

C and C++

Java

Server operating systems

All OS with a Java VM
Linux
OS X
Windows

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
Solaris
Windows
z/OS

Linux
Windows

Android
iOS
Linux
macOS
Windows

Linux
OS X
Unix
Windows

Data scheme

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

yes

RDF Schemas

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

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

SQL

Support of SQL

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

yes

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

ADO.NET
JDBC
JSON style queries

MongoDB compatible
ODBC
XQuery

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
OLE DB
Tabular Data Stream (TDS)

Proprietary native API

Java API
RIO

RDF Input/Output
Sail API
SeRQL

Sesame RDF Query Language
Sesame REST HTTP Protocol
SPARQL

Supported programming languages

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

C
C#
C++
Cobol
Delphi
Fortran
Java
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Visual Basic

C#
C++
Delphi
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Visual Basic

C
C++
Dart
Go
Java
JavaScript

planned (as of Jan 2019)
Kotlin
Python

planned (as of Jan 2019)
Swift

Java
PHP
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

well-defined plugin interfaces; JavaScript server-side extensibility

yes

Transact SQL, .NET languages, R, Python and (with SQL Server 2019) Java

yes

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Sharding

only with Windows/Unix/Linux Version

tables can be distributed across several files (horizontal partitioning); sharding through federation

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication

yes

with separate tools (MQ, InfoSphere)

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

online/offline synchronization between client and server

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

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Constraint checking

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

Isolation support depends on the API used

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

in-memory storage is supported as well

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.

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

yes

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

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

Competitive advantages

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

Typical application scenarios

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

Key customers

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

Market metrics

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

Licensing and pricing models

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

News

Understanding the Graph Center of Excellence
17 May 2024

Migrating From LPG to RDF Graph Model
8 May 2024

Case study: Policy Enforcement Automation With Semantics
2 May 2024

Okay, RAG… We Have a Problem
26 April 2024

Scaling Understanding with the Help of Feedback Loops, Knowledge Graphs and NLP
19 April 2024

The first On-Device Vector Database: ObjectBox 4.0
16 May 2024

Edge AI: The era of on-device AI
23 April 2024

In-Memory Database Use Cases
15 February 2024

Data Viewer for Objects – announcing ObjectBox Admin
14 November 2023

Vector Databases for Edge AI
9 August 2023

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