DBMS > GraphDB vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Neo4j vs. RDF4J vs. Stardog

System Properties Comparison GraphDB vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Neo4j vs. RDF4J vs. Stardog

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.

Globally distributed, horizontally scalable, multi-model database service

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

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

Enterprise Knowledge Graph platform and graph DBMS with high availability, high performance reasoning, and virtualization

Primary database model

Graph DBMS
RDF store

Document store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store
Wide column store

Graph DBMS

RDF store

Graph DBMS
RDF store

Secondary database models

Spatial DBMS

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

Score	3.10
Rank	#100	Overall
	#7	Graph DBMS
	#4	RDF stores

Score	29.85
Rank	#27	Overall
	#4	Document stores
	#2	Graph DBMS
	#3	Key-value stores
	#3	Wide column stores

Score	44.47
Rank	#23	Overall
	#1	Graph DBMS

Score	0.71
Rank	#231	Overall
	#9	RDF stores

Score	2.05
Rank	#129	Overall
	#11	Graph DBMS
	#6	RDF stores

Website

www.ontotext.com

azure.microsoft.com/services/cosmos-db

neo4j.com

rdf4j.org

www.stardog.com

Technical documentation

graphdb.ontotext.com/documentation

learn.microsoft.com/azure/cosmos-db

neo4j.com/docs

rdf4j.org/documentation

docs.stardog.com

Social network pages

Developer

Ontotext

Microsoft

Neo4j, Inc.

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

Stardog-Union

Initial release

2000

2014

2007

2004

2010

Current release

10.4, October 2023

5.18.1, March 2024

7.3.0, May 2020

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Some plugins of GraphDB Workbench are open sourced

commercial

Open Source

GPL version3, commercial licenses available

Open Source

Eclipse Distribution License (EDL), v1.0.

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

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

Java, Scala

Java

Server operating systems

All OS with a Java VM
Linux
OS X
Windows

hosted

Linux

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

Linux
OS X
Unix
Windows

Linux
macOS
Windows

Data scheme

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

schema-free

schema-free and schema-optional

yes

RDF Schemas

schema-free and OWL/RDFS-schema support

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

JSON 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.

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

All properties auto-indexed by default

yes

pluggable indexing subsystem, by default Apache Lucene

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

SQL-like query language

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

DocumentDB API
Graph API (Gremlin)
MongoDB API
RESTful HTTP API
Table API

Bolt protocol
Cypher query language
Java API
Neo4j-OGM

Object Graph Mapper
RESTful HTTP API
Spring Data Neo4j
TinkerPop 3

Java API
RIO

RDF Input/Output
Sail API
SeRQL

Sesame RDF Query Language
Sesame REST HTTP Protocol
SPARQL

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
JavaScript
JavaScript (Node.js)
MongoDB client drivers written for various programming languages
Python

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

Java
PHP
Python

.Net
Clojure
Groovy
Java
JavaScript
Python
Ruby

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

well-defined plugin interfaces; JavaScript server-side extensibility

JavaScript

yes

User defined Procedures and Functions

yes

user defined functions and aggregates, HTTP Server extensions in Java

Triggers

JavaScript

yes

via event handler

yes

via event handlers

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

yes using Neo4j Fabric

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

Causal Clustering using Raft protocol

available in in Enterprise Version only

none

Multi-source replication in HA-Cluster

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

with Hadoop integration

Integration with Hadoop/HDInsight on Azure*

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

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

Bounded Staleness
Consistent Prefix
Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Consistency level configurable on request level
Session Consistency

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

Immediate Consistency in HA-Cluster

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Constraint checking

yes

Relationships in graphs

yes

relationships in graphs

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

Multi-item ACID transactions with snapshot isolation within a partition

ACID

Isolation support depends on the API used

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

in-memory storage is supported as well

yes

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 can be defined down to the item level

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

Access rights for users and roles

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Ontotext GraphDB is a semantic database engine that allows organizations to build...
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Neo4j delivers graph technology that has been battle tested for performance and scale...
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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...
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Typical application scenarios

Metadata enrichment and management, linked data publishing, semantic inferencing...
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Real-Time Recommendations Master Data Management Identity and Access Management Network...
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Key customers

GraphDB provides a platform for building next-generation AI and Knowledge Graph...
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Over 800 commercial customers and over 4300 startups use Neo4j. Flagship customers...
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Market metrics

GraphDB is the most utilized semantic triplestore for mission-critical enterprise...
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Neo4j boasts the world's largest graph database ecosystem with more than 140 million...
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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...
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News

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10 April 2024

Building Smarter Financial Services: The Role of Semantic Technologies, Knowledge Graphs and Generative AI
3 April 2024

Using GraphDB’s Natural Language Interface to Talk with Your Content
29 March 2024

Choosing A Graph Data Model to Best Serve Your Use Case
27 March 2024

Event Extraction Based on Fine-Tuned Text2Event Transformer Speeds up the Fact-checking Process
22 March 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

Neo4j Is Now SOC2 Type 2 Compliant
8 April 2024

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