DBMS > Graphite vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. Neo4j vs. OpenSearch vs. VoltDB

System Properties Comparison Graphite vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. Neo4j vs. OpenSearch vs. VoltDB

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Data logging and graphing tool for time series data

The storage layer (fixed size database) is called Whisper

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

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

A distributed, RESTful search and analytics engine forked from Elasticsearch and based on Apache Lucene

Distributed In-Memory NewSQL RDBMS

Used for OLTP applications with a high frequency of relatively simple transactions, that can hold all their data in memory

Primary database model

Secondary database models

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

Vector DBMS

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

Score	4.83
Rank	#67	Overall
	#4	Time Series DBMS

Score	821.56
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	44.89
Rank	#21	Overall
	#1	Graph DBMS

Score	16.03
Rank	#37	Overall
	#4	Search engines

Score	1.47
Rank	#157	Overall
	#73	Relational DBMS

Website

github.com/graphite-project/graphite-web

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

neo4j.com

github.com/opensearch-project
opensearch.org

www.voltdb.com

Technical documentation

graphite.readthedocs.io

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

neo4j.com/docs

opensearch.org/docs/latest

docs.voltdb.com

Developer

Chris Davis

Microsoft

Neo4j, Inc.

Amazon Web Services

VoltDB Inc.

Initial release

2006

1989

2007

2021

2010

Current release

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

5.20, May 2024

2.5.0, January 2023

11.3, April 2022

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache 2.0

commercial

restricted free version is available

Open Source

GPL version3, commercial licenses available

Open Source

Apache Version 2.0

Open Source

AGPL for Community Edition, commercial license for Enterprise, AWS, and Pro Editions

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.

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.

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

Aiven for OpenSearch: Fully managed open source search and analytics suite. Out-of-the-box integrations get you up and running in a couple of clicks.
STACKIT OpenSearch offers OpenSearch in a managed version in enterprise grade, 100% GDPR-compliant, for a wide range of applications like analytics, website search, offering scalability and fast data access.

Implementation language

Python

C++

Java, Scala

Java

Java, C++

Server operating systems

Linux
Unix

Linux
Windows

Linux

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

All OS with a Java VM

Linux
OS X

for development

Data scheme

yes

schema-free and schema-optional

schema-free

Flexible type definitions. Once a type is defined, it is persistent

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

Numeric data only

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

pluggable indexing subsystem, by default Apache Lucene

yes

All search fields are automatically indexed

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

SQL-like query language

yes

only a subset of SQL 99

APIs and other access methods

HTTP API
Sockets

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

Bolt protocol
Cypher query language
Java API
Neo4j-OGM

Object Graph Mapper
RESTful HTTP API
Spring Data Neo4j
TinkerPop 3

Java API
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Java API
JDBC
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Supported programming languages

JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

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

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

Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby

Elasticsearch client

C#
C++
Erlang

not officially supported
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
PHP
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

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

yes

User defined Procedures and Functions

yes

Java

Triggers

yes

via event handler

yes

by using the 'percolation' feature

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

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

yes using Neo4j Fabric

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

none

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

Causal Clustering using Raft protocol

available in in Enterprise Version only

yes

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

none

Immediate Consistency

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

Eventual Consistency

Synchronous doc based replication. Get by ID may show delays up to 1 sec. Configurable write consistency: one, quorum, all

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Relationships in graphs

FOREIGN KEY constraints are not supported

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

Transactions are executed single-threaded within stored procedures

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

locking

yes

Data access is serialized by the server

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

Snapshots and command logging

In-memory capabilities

Is there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.

yes

User concepts

Access control

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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

Users and roles with access to stored procedures

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Neo4j delivers graph technology that has been battle tested for performance and scale...
» more

OpenSearch is a highly scalable and extensible open-source software suite for search,...
» more

Competitive advantages

Neo4j is the market leader, graph database category creator, and the most widely...
» more

Distributed as fully open source under Apache License, Version 2.0 (ALv2), OpenSearch...
» more

Typical application scenarios

Real-Time Recommendations Master Data Management Identity and Access Management Network...
» more

The OpenSearch platform is used across a broad range of search , analytics, and observability...
» more

Key customers

Over 800 commercial customers and over 4300 startups use Neo4j. Flagship customers...
» more

Market metrics

Neo4j boasts the world's largest graph database ecosystem with more than 140 million...
» more

Licensing and pricing models

GPL v3 license that can be used all the places where you might use MySQL. Neo4j Commercial...
» more

The OpenSearch Project offers open source software licensed under Apache License...
» more

News

Neo4j-Databricks Connector Delivers Deeper Insights, Faster GenAI Development
10 June 2024

This Week in Neo4j: Podcast, Testing, Knowledge Graph, GenAI and more
8 June 2024

Neo4j and Snowflake Bring Graph Data Science Into the AI Data Cloud
4 June 2024

RDF vs. Property Graphs: Choosing the Right Approach for Implementing a Knowledge Graph
4 June 2024

This Week in Neo4j: Importing Data, NODES, GenAI, Going Meta and more
1 June 2024

We invite representatives of system vendors to contact us for updating and extending the system information,
and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.