DBMS > Hive vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. Neo4j vs. RavenDB vs. RDF4J

System Properties Comparison Hive vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. Neo4j vs. RavenDB vs. RDF4J

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

data warehouse software for querying and managing large distributed datasets, built on Hadoop

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

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

Open Source Operational and Transactional Enterprise NoSQL Document Database

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

Primary database model

Secondary database models

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS
Time Series DBMS

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

Score	61.17
Rank	#18	Overall
	#12	Relational DBMS

Score	824.29
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	44.46
Rank	#23	Overall
	#1	Graph DBMS

Score	2.92
Rank	#101	Overall
	#18	Document stores

Score	0.69
Rank	#230	Overall
	#9	RDF stores

Website

hive.apache.org

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

neo4j.com

ravendb.net

rdf4j.org

Technical documentation

cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/Hive/Home

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

neo4j.com/docs

ravendb.net/docs

rdf4j.org/documentation

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

initially developed by Facebook

Microsoft

Neo4j, Inc.

Hibernating Rhinos

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

Initial release

2012

1989

2007

2010

2004

Current release

3.1.3, April 2022

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

5.20, May 2024

5.4, July 2022

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache Version 2

commercial

restricted free version is available

Open Source

GPL version3, commercial licenses available

Open Source

AGPL version 3, commercial license available

Open Source

Eclipse Distribution License (EDL), v1.0.

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

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

Implementation language

Java

C++

Java, Scala

Java

Server operating systems

All OS with a Java VM

Linux
Windows

Linux

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

Linux
macOS
Raspberry Pi
Windows

Linux
OS X
Unix
Windows

Data scheme

yes

schema-free and schema-optional

schema-free

yes

RDF Schemas

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

pluggable indexing subsystem, by default Apache Lucene

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like DML and DDL statements

yes

SQL-like query language (RQL)

APIs and other access methods

JDBC
ODBC
Thrift

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

.NET Client API
F# Client API
Go Client API
Java Client API
NodeJS Client API
PHP Client API
Python Client API
RESTful HTTP API

Java API
RIO

RDF Input/Output
Sail API
SeRQL

Sesame RDF Query Language
Sesame REST HTTP Protocol
SPARQL

Supported programming languages

C++
Java
PHP
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

.Net
C#
F#
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby

Java
PHP
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

user defined functions and integration of map-reduce

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

yes

User defined Procedures and Functions

yes

Triggers

yes

via event handler

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

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

yes using Neo4j Fabric

Sharding

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication factor

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

Causal Clustering using Raft protocol

available in in Enterprise Version only

Multi-source replication

none

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

query execution via MapReduce

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency

Immediate Consistency

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

Default ACID transactions on the local node (eventually consistent across the cluster). Atomic operations with cluster-wide ACID transactions. Eventual consistency for indexes and full-text search indexes.

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Relationships in graphs

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

ACID, Cluster-wide transaction available

ACID

Isolation support depends on the API used

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

in-memory storage is supported as well

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users, groups and roles

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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

Authorization levels configured per client per database

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

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Competitive advantages

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Typical application scenarios

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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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