DBMS > GraphDB vs. MaxDB vs. Neo4j vs. PostgreSQL vs. Stardog
System Properties Comparison GraphDB vs. MaxDB vs. Neo4j vs. PostgreSQL vs. Stardog
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| Name | GraphDB  former name: OWLIM Xexclude from comparison | MaxDB formerly named Adabas-D Xexclude from comparison | Neo4j Xexclude from comparison | PostgreSQL Xexclude from comparison | Stardog Xexclude from comparison | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 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 robust and reliable RDBMS optimized to run all major SAP solutions | Scalable, ACID-compliant graph database designed with a high-performance distributed cluster architecture, available in self-hosted and cloud offerings | Widely used open source RDBMS Developed as objectoriented DBMS (Postgres), gradually enhanced with 'standards' like SQL | Enterprise Knowledge Graph platform and graph DBMS with high availability, high performance reasoning, and virtualization | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Primary database model | Graph DBMS RDF store | Relational DBMS | Graph DBMS | Relational DBMS with object oriented extensions, e.g.: user defined types/functions and inheritance. Handling of key/value pairs with hstore module. | Graph DBMS RDF store | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Secondary database models | Document store Graph DBMS with Apache AgeSpatial DBMS Vector DBMS with pgvector extension | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Website | www.ontotext.com | maxdb.sap.com | neo4j.com | www.postgresql.org | www.stardog.com | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Technical documentation | graphdb.ontotext.com/documentation | maxdb.sap.com/documentation | neo4j.com/docs | www.postgresql.org/docs | docs.stardog.com | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Developer | Ontotext | SAP, acquired from Software AG (Adabas-D) in 1997 | Neo4j, Inc. | PostgreSQL Global Development Group www.postgresql.org/developer | Stardog-Union | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Initial release | 2000 | 1984 | 2007 | 1989 1989: Postgres, 1996: PostgreSQL | 2010 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Current release | 10.4, October 2023 | 7.9.10.12, February 2024 | 5.18.1, March 2024 | 16.2, February 2024 | 7.3.0, May 2020 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| License Commercial or Open Source | commercial Some plugins of GraphDB Workbench are open sourced | commercial Limited community edition free | Open Source GPL version3, commercial licenses available | Open Source BSD | commercial 60-day fully-featured trial license; 1-year fully-featured non-commercial use license for academics/students | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Cloud-based only Only available as a cloud service | no | no | no | no | no | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 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. | Aiven for PostgreSQL: Fully managed PostgreSQL for developers with 70+ extensions and flexible orchestration tools. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Implementation language | Java | C++ | Java, Scala | C | Java | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Server operating systems | All OS with a Java VM Linux OS X Windows | AIX HP-UX Linux Solaris Windows | Linux Can also be used server-less as embedded Java database. OS X Solaris Windows | FreeBSD HP-UX Linux NetBSD OpenBSD OS X Solaris Unix Windows | Linux macOS Windows | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Data scheme | schema-free and OWL/RDFS-schema support; RDF shapes | yes | schema-free and schema-optional | yes | schema-free and OWL/RDFS-schema support | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Typing predefined data types such as float or date | yes | yes | yes | yes | 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. | no | no | yes specific XML-type available, but no XML query functionality. | no Import/export of XML data possible | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Secondary indexes | yes, supports real-time synchronization and indexing in SOLR/Elastic search/Lucene and GeoSPARQL geometry data indexes | yes | yes pluggable indexing subsystem, by default Apache Lucene | yes | yes supports real-time indexing in full-text and geospatial | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| SQL Support of SQL | stored SPARQL accessed as SQL using Apache Calcite through JDBC/ODBC | yes | no | yes standard with numerous extensions | Yes, compatible with all major SQL variants through dedicated BI/SQL Server | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 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 ODBC WebDAV | Bolt protocol Cypher query language Java API Neo4j-OGM Object Graph MapperRESTful HTTP API Spring Data Neo4j TinkerPop 3 | ADO.NET JDBC native C library ODBC streaming API for large objects | GraphQL query language HTTP API Jena RDF API OWL RDF4J API Sesame REST HTTP Protocol SNARL SPARQL Spring Data Stardog Studio TinkerPop 3 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Supported programming languages | .Net C# Clojure Java JavaScript (Node.js) PHP Python Ruby Scala | .Net C# Java Perl PHP Python | .Net Clojure Elixir Go Groovy Haskell Java JavaScript Perl PHP Python Ruby Scala | .Net C C++ Delphi Java JDBCJavaScript (Node.js) Perl PHP Python Tcl | .Net Clojure Groovy Java JavaScript Python Ruby | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Server-side scripts Stored procedures | well-defined plugin interfaces; JavaScript server-side extensibility | yes | yes User defined Procedures and Functions | user defined functions realized in proprietary language PL/pgSQL or with common languages like Perl, Python, Tcl etc. | user defined functions and aggregates, HTTP Server extensions in Java | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Triggers | no | yes | yes via event handler | yes | yes via event handlers | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Partitioning methods Methods for storing different data on different nodes | none | none | yes using Neo4j Fabric | partitioning by range, list and (since PostgreSQL 11) by hash | none | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Replication methods Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes | Multi-source replication | Source-replica replication | Causal Clustering using Raft protocol available in in Enterprise Version only | Source-replica replication other methods possible by using 3rd party extensions | Multi-source replication in HA-Cluster | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| MapReduce Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods | no | no | no | no | no | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 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 | Immediate Consistency | Immediate Consistency in HA-Cluster | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Foreign keys Referential integrity | yes Constraint checking | yes | yes Relationships in graphs | yes | yes relationships in graphs | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Transaction concepts Support to ensure data integrity after non-atomic manipulations of data | ACID | ACID | ACID | ACID | ACID | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Concurrency Support for concurrent manipulation of data | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Durability Support for making data persistent | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| In-memory capabilities Is there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only. | no | no | 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 | Users, roles and permissions. Pluggable authentication with supported standards (LDAP, Active Directory, Kerberos) | fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard | Access rights for users and roles | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| GraphDB former name: OWLIM | MaxDB formerly named Adabas-D | Neo4j | PostgreSQL | Stardog | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 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 | How Knowledge Graphs Power Data Mesh and Data Fabric Building Smarter Financial Services: The Role of Semantic Technologies, Knowledge Graphs and Generative AI Using GraphDB’s Natural Language Interface to Talk with Your Content Choosing A Graph Data Model to Best Serve Your Use Case Event Extraction Based on Fine-Tuned Text2Event Transformer Speeds up the Fact-checking Process | Announcing NODES 2024: Submit Your Talk ISO GQL: A Defining Moment in the History of Database Innovation This Week in Neo4j: Podcast, RAG, Neo4j Guide, ERP and more Neo4j Brings GraphRAG Capabilities for GenAI to Google Cloud Neo4j Is Now SOC2 Type 2 Compliant | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| 3rd parties | Aiven for PostgreSQL: Fully managed PostgreSQL for developers with 70+ extensions and flexible orchestration tools.
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| More resources | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| GraphDB former name: OWLIM | MaxDB formerly named Adabas-D | Neo4j | PostgreSQL | Stardog | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| DB-Engines blog posts | Applying Graph Analytics to Game of Thrones MySQL, PostgreSQL and Redis are the winners of the March ranking The openCypher Project: Help Shape the SQL for Graphs | PostgreSQL is the DBMS of the Year 2023 Snowflake is the DBMS of the Year 2022, defending the title from last year Snowflake is the DBMS of the Year 2021 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Conferences, events and webinars | Monitoring PostgreSQL with Redgate Monitor | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Recent citations in the news | Ontotext's GraphDB Solution is Now Available on the Microsoft Azure Marketplace Ontotext Unveils GraphDB 10.4 with Enhanced AWS Integration and ChatGPT Connector Ontotext GraphDB is available on Azure, delivers rich knowledge graph experience Knowledge graphs change the nature of business intelligence Ontotext Platform 3.0 for Enterprise Knowledge Graphs Released provided by Google News | SAP Content Server High Availability using Amazon EFS and SUSE | Amazon Web Services SAP Aligns Mainstream Maintenance Commitments Across Its Enterprise Solutions SIOS looks to boost SAP HANA automated replication Alibaba Cloud Offers Access to SAP Software for Customers Your SAP HANA Cheat Sheet: Milestones, Terms and More provided by Google News | Neo4j Welcomes New GQL International Standard in Major Milestone for Database Industry Knowledge graphs leveraged for enhanced AI insights Using Neo4j’s graph database for AI in Azure Neo4j 'instrumental' in creation of new ISO graph query standard Leveraging Neo4j and Amazon Bedrock for an Explainable, Secure, and Connected Generative AI Solution | Amazon ... provided by Google News | Handle tables without primary keys while creating Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL zero-ETL integrations with Amazon ... pgEdge Distributed PostgreSQL Introduces Automatic DDL Replication and Snowflake Sequences for Postgres Breaking Boundaries: PostgreSQL 16 is now available on IBM Cloud PeerDB: PostgreSQL Data Movement Platform Company Closes $3.6 Million Introducing OCI Database with PostgreSQL: Completing Our Cloud Database Suite for Every Need provided by Google News | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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