DBMS > HBase vs. Informix vs. Neo4j vs. Oracle vs. Stardog

System Properties Comparison HBase vs. Informix vs. Neo4j vs. Oracle vs. Stardog

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Wide-column store based on Apache Hadoop and on concepts of BigTable

A secure embeddable database from IBM, positioned besides IBM Db2 as a relatively low-cost product optimized for OLTP and Internet of Things data

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

Widely used RDBMS

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

Primary database model

Wide column store

Relational DBMS

Since Version 12.10 support for JSON/BSON datatypes compatible with MongoDB

Graph DBMS

Relational DBMS

Graph DBMS
RDF store

Secondary database models

Document store
Spatial DBMS
Time Series DBMS

with Informix TimeSeries Extension

Document store
Graph DBMS

with Oracle Spatial and Graph
RDF store

with Oracle Spatial and Graph
Spatial DBMS

with Oracle Spatial and Graph
Vector DBMS

since Oracle 23

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

Score	27.97
Rank	#26	Overall
	#2	Wide column stores

Score	17.12
Rank	#34	Overall
	#21	Relational DBMS

Score	44.89
Rank	#21	Overall
	#1	Graph DBMS

Score	1244.08
Rank	#1	Overall
	#1	Relational DBMS

Score	2.07
Rank	#122	Overall
	#11	Graph DBMS
	#6	RDF stores

Website

hbase.apache.org

www.ibm.com/products/informix

neo4j.com

www.oracle.com/database

www.stardog.com

Technical documentation

hbase.apache.org/book.html

informix.hcldoc.com
www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SSGU8G/welcomeIfxServers.html

neo4j.com/docs

docs.oracle.com/en/database

docs.stardog.com

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top-level project, originally developed by Powerset

IBM, HCL Technologies

Effective May 1st, 2017, HCL took on development, technical support, and product management teams, and works jointly with IBM on product strategy, marketing, and sales.

Neo4j, Inc.

Oracle

Stardog-Union

Initial release

2008

1984

2007

1980

2010

Current release

2.3.4, January 2021

14.10.FC5, November 2020

5.20, May 2024

23c, September 2023

7.3.0, May 2020

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

commercial

free developer edition available

Open Source

GPL version3, commercial licenses available

commercial

restricted free version is available

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

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, C++ and Java

Java, Scala

C and C++

Java

Server operating systems

Linux
Unix
Windows

using Cygwin

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
macOS
Solaris
Windows

Linux

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

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows
z/OS

Linux
macOS
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free, schema definition possible

yes

schema-free and schema-optional

yes

Schemaless in JSON and XML columns

schema-free and OWL/RDFS-schema support

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

options to bring your own types, AVRO

yes

Since Version 12.10 support for JSON/BSON datatypes

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

Import/export of XML data possible

Secondary indexes

yes

pluggable indexing subsystem, by default Apache Lucene

yes

supports real-time indexing in full-text and geospatial

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

with proprietary extensions

Yes, compatible with all major SQL variants through dedicated BI/SQL Server

APIs and other access methods

Java API
RESTful HTTP API
Thrift

JDBC
JSON API

MongoDB compatible
MQTT (Message Queue Telemetry Transport)
ODBC
RESTful HTTP API

Bolt protocol
Cypher query language
Java API
Neo4j-OGM

Object Graph Mapper
RESTful HTTP API
Spring Data Neo4j
TinkerPop 3

JDBC
ODBC
ODP.NET
Oracle Call Interface (OCI)

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

C
C#
C++
Groovy
Java
PHP
Python
Scala

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

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

C
C#
C++
Clojure
Cobol
Delphi
Eiffel
Erlang
Fortran
Groovy
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Lisp
Objective C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Scala
Tcl
Visual Basic

.Net
Clojure
Groovy
Java
JavaScript
Python
Ruby

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

Coprocessors in Java

yes

User defined Procedures and Functions

PL/SQL

also stored procedures in Java possible

user defined functions and aggregates, HTTP Server extensions in Java

Triggers

yes

via event handler

yes

via event handlers

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

yes using Neo4j Fabric

Sharding, horizontal partitioning

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

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

Multi-source replication in HA-Cluster

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

can be realized in PL/SQL

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency or Eventual Consistency

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

Relationships in graphs

yes

relationships in graphs

Transaction concepts

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

Single row ACID (across millions of columns)

ACID

isolation level can be parameterized

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

Version 12c introduced the new option 'Oracle Database In-Memory'

yes

User concepts

Access control

Access Control Lists (ACL) for RBAC, integration with Apache Ranger for RBAC & ABAC

Users with fine-grained authentication, authorization, and auditing controls

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

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Neo4j delivers graph technology that has been battle tested for performance and scale...
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Competitive advantages

Neo4j is the market leader, graph database category creator, and the most widely...
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Typical application scenarios

Real-Time Recommendations Master Data Management Identity and Access Management Network...
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Key customers

Over 800 commercial customers and over 4300 startups use Neo4j. Flagship customers...
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Market metrics

Neo4j boasts the world's largest graph database ecosystem with more than 140 million...
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Licensing and pricing models

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

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

openCypher Will Pave the Road to GQL for Cypher Implementers
22 May 2024

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