DBMS > GraphDB vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. MonetDB vs. Neo4j vs. Riak KV

System Properties Comparison GraphDB vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. MonetDB vs. Neo4j vs. Riak KV

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.

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

A relational database management system that stores data in columns

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

Distributed, fault tolerant key-value store

Primary database model

with links between data sets and object tags for the creation of secondary indexes

Secondary database models

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

Document store
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	829.80
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	1.72
Rank	#148	Overall
	#68	Relational DBMS

Score	44.47
Rank	#23	Overall
	#1	Graph DBMS

Score	4.44
Rank	#80	Overall
	#9	Key-value stores

Website

www.ontotext.com

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

www.monetdb.org

neo4j.com

Technical documentation

graphdb.ontotext.com/documentation

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

www.monetdb.org/Documentation

neo4j.com/docs

www.tiot.jp/riak-docs/riak/kv/latest

Social network pages

Developer

Ontotext

Microsoft

MonetDB BV

Neo4j, Inc.

OpenSource, formerly Basho Technologies

Initial release

2000

1989

2004

2007

2009

Current release

10.4, October 2023

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

Dec2023 (11.49), December 2023

5.19, April 2024

3.2.0, December 2022

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Some plugins of GraphDB Workbench are open sourced

commercial

restricted free version is available

Open Source

Mozilla Public License 2.0

Open Source

GPL version3, commercial licenses available

Open Source

Apache version 2, commercial enterprise edition

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.

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

Implementation language

Java

C++

Java, Scala

Erlang

Server operating systems

All OS with a Java VM
Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
Windows

FreeBSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Linux

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

Linux
OS X

Data scheme

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

yes

schema-free and schema-optional

schema-free

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

pluggable indexing subsystem, by default Apache Lucene

restricted

SQL

Support of SQL

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

yes

SQL 2003 with some 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

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

JDBC
native C library

MAPI library (MonetDB application programming interface)
ODBC

Bolt protocol
Cypher query language
Java API
Neo4j-OGM

Object Graph Mapper
RESTful HTTP API
Spring Data Neo4j
TinkerPop 3

HTTP API
Native Erlang Interface

Supported programming languages

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

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

C
C++
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Ruby

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

unofficial client library
C#
C++

unofficial client library
Clojure

unofficial client library
Dart

unofficial client library
Erlang
Go

unofficial client library
Groovy

unofficial client library
Haskell

unofficial client library
Java
JavaScript

unofficial client library
Lisp

unofficial client library
Perl

unofficial client library
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

unofficial client library
Smalltalk

unofficial client library

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

well-defined plugin interfaces; JavaScript server-side extensibility

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

yes, in SQL, C, R

yes

User defined Procedures and Functions

Erlang

Triggers

yes

via event handler

yes

pre-commit hooks and post-commit hooks

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

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

Sharding via remote tables

yes using Neo4j Fabric

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

none

Source-replica replication available in experimental status

Causal Clustering using Raft protocol

available in in Enterprise Version only

selectable replication factor

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

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

Eventual Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Constraint checking

yes

Relationships in graphs

links between data sets can be stored

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

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.

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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

yes, using Riak Security

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

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