DBMS > GraphDB vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. Snowflake vs. Weaviate

System Properties Comparison GraphDB vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. Snowflake vs. Weaviate

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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

Cloud-based data warehousing service for structured and semi-structured data

An AI-native realtime vector database engine that integrates scalable machine learning models.

Primary database model

Graph DBMS
RDF store

Relational DBMS

Vector DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	2.89
Rank	#93	Overall
	#7	Graph DBMS
	#3	RDF stores

Score	799.81
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	142.50
Rank	#7	Overall
	#5	Relational DBMS

Score	1.45
Rank	#147	Overall
	#9	Vector DBMS

Website

www.ontotext.com

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

www.snowflake.com

github.com/weaviate/weaviate
weaviate.io

Technical documentation

graphdb.ontotext.com/documentation

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

docs.snowflake.net/manuals/index.html

weaviate.io/developers/weaviate

Social network pages

Developer

Ontotext

Microsoft

Snowflake Computing Inc.

Weaviate B.V.

Initial release

2000

1989

2014

2019

Current release

10.4, October 2023

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

1.19, May 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Some plugins of GraphDB Workbench are open sourced

commercial

restricted free version is available

commercial

Open Source

commercial license available with Weaviate Enterprise

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

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Implementation language

Java

C++

Server operating systems

All OS with a Java VM
Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
Windows

hosted

Data scheme

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

yes

support of semi-structured data formats (JSON, XML, Avro)

yes, maps to GraphQL interface

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

string, int, float, geo point, date, cross reference, fuzzy references

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

all data objects are indexed in a semantic vector space (the Contextionary), all primitive fields are indexed

SQL

Support of SQL

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

yes

GraphQL is used as query language

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)

CLI Client
JDBC
ODBC

GraphQL query language
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

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

JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

JavaScript / TypeScript
Python

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

user defined functions

Triggers

yes

similar concept for controling cloud resources

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

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

yes

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

yes

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

Eventual Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Constraint checking

yes

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 with fine-grained authorization concept, user roles and pluggable authentication

API Keys
OpenID Connect Discovery

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

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

Weaviate is an open source vector database that is robust, scalable, cloud-native,...
» more

Competitive advantages

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

Flexible deployment - Free, open source or fully-managed cloud vector database service...
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Typical application scenarios

Metadata enrichment and management, linked data publishing, semantic inferencing...
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As a database supporting the development of generative AI and semantic search applications...
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Key customers

GraphDB provides a platform for building next-generation AI and Knowledge Graph...
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All companies that have data.
» more

Market metrics

GraphDB is the most utilized semantic triplestore for mission-critical enterprise...
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As of mid 2023: Over 2 million open source downloads 3500+ Weaviate Slack community...
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Licensing and pricing models

GraphDB Free is a non-commercial version and is free to use. GraphDB Enterprise edition...
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Weaviate is open-source, and free to use. Weaviate is also available as a fully managed...
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