DBMS > GraphDB vs. IRONdb vs. MariaDB vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. RDF4J

System Properties Comparison GraphDB vs. IRONdb vs. MariaDB vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. RDF4J

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

IRONdb seems to be discontinued. Therefore it is excluded from the DB-Engines Ranking.

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.

A distributed Time Series DBMS with a focus on scalability, fault tolerance and operational simplicity

MySQL application compatible open source RDBMS, enhanced with high availability, security, interoperability and performance capabilities. MariaDB ColumnStore provides a column-oriented storage engine and MariaDB Xpand supports distributed SQL.

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

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

Primary database model

Secondary database models

Document store
Graph DBMS

with OQGraph storage engine
Spatial DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS
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	91.04
Rank	#13	Overall
	#9	Relational DBMS

Score	821.56
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	0.74
Rank	#222	Overall
	#9	RDF stores

Website

www.ontotext.com

www.circonus.com/solutions/time-series-database/

mariadb.com

Site of MariaDB Corporation
mariadb.org

Site of MariaDB Foundation

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

rdf4j.org

Technical documentation

graphdb.ontotext.com/documentation

docs.circonus.com/irondb/category/getting-started

mariadb.com/kb/en/library

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

rdf4j.org/documentation

Social network pages

Developer

Ontotext

Circonus LLC.

MariaDB Corporation Ab (MariaDB Enterprise),
MariaDB Foundation (community MariaDB Server)

The lead developer Monty Widenius is the original author of MySQL

Microsoft

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

Initial release

2000

2017

2009

Fork of MySQL, which was first released in 1995

1989

2004

Current release

10.4, October 2023

V0.10.20, January 2018

11.3.2, February 2024

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Some plugins of GraphDB Workbench are open sourced

commercial

Open Source

GPL version 2, commercial enterprise subscription available

commercial

restricted free version is available

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

Providers of DBaaS offerings, please contact us to be listed.

STACKIT MariaDB offers MariaDB in a fully managed version in enterprise grade, 100% GDPR-compliant.

SQLServer Flex @ STACKIT offers a managed version of SQL Server with adjustable CPU, RAM, storage amount and speed, in enterprise grade to perfectly match all application requirements. All services are 100% GDPR-compliant.

Implementation language

Java

C and C++

C++

Java

Server operating systems

All OS with a Java VM
Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux

FreeBSD
Linux
Solaris
Windows

ColumnStore storage engine not available on Windows

Linux
Windows

Linux
OS X
Unix
Windows

Data scheme

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

schema-free

yes

Dynamic columns are supported

yes

RDF Schemas

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

text, numeric, histograms

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

SQL-like query language (Circonus Analytics Query Language: CAQL)

yes

with proprietary extensions

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

HTTP API

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary native API

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

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

.Net
C
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
JavaScript (Node.js)
Lisp
Lua
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Rust
Scala

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

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

Java
PHP
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

well-defined plugin interfaces; JavaScript server-side extensibility

yes, in Lua

yes

PL/SQL compatibility added with version 10.3

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

Automatic, metric affinity per node

several options for horizontal partitioning and Sharding

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

configurable replication factor, datacenter aware

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

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 per node, eventual consistency across nodes

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Constraint checking

yes

not for MyISAM storage engine

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

not for MyISAM storage engine

ACID

Isolation support depends on the API used

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

not for in-memory storage engine

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

with MEMORY storage engine

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

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

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

MariaDB is the most powerful open source relational database – modern SQL and JSON...
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Competitive advantages

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

MariaDB Servers have many features unavailable in other open source relational databases....
» more

Typical application scenarios

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

Web, SaaS and Cloud operational applications that require high availability, scalability...
» more

Key customers

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

Deutsche Bank, DBS Bank, Nasdaq, Red Hat, ServiceNow, Verizon and Walgreens Featured...
» more

Market metrics

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

MariaDB is the default database in the LAMP stack supplied by Red Hat and SUSE Linux,...
» more

Licensing and pricing models

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

MariaDB plc subscriptions cover our free, open source database, Community Server,...
» more

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Understanding the Graph Center of Excellence
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and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.