DBMS > HyperSQL vs. InterSystems IRIS vs. Neo4j vs. Snowflake vs. YugabyteDB

System Properties Comparison HyperSQL vs. InterSystems IRIS vs. Neo4j vs. Snowflake vs. YugabyteDB

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Multithreaded, transactional RDBMS written in Java

also known as HSQLDB

A containerised multi-model DBMS, interoperability and analytics data platform with wide capabilities for vertical and horizontal scalability

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

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

High-performance distributed SQL database for global, internet-scale applications. Wire and feature compatible with PostgreSQL.

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Document store
Key-value store
Object oriented DBMS
Relational DBMS

Graph DBMS

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
Wide column store

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

Score	3.49
Rank	#87	Overall
	#47	Relational DBMS

Score	4.05
Rank	#83	Overall
	#14	Document stores
	#10	Key-value stores
	#1	Object oriented DBMS
	#45	Relational DBMS

Score	44.46
Rank	#23	Overall
	#1	Graph DBMS

Score	121.33
Rank	#9	Overall
	#6	Relational DBMS

Score	2.91
Rank	#102	Overall
	#51	Relational DBMS

Website

hsqldb.org

www.intersystems.com/products/intersystems-iris

neo4j.com

www.snowflake.com

www.yugabyte.com

Technical documentation

hsqldb.org/web/hsqlDocsFrame.html

docs.intersystems.com/irislatest/csp/docbook/DocBook.UI.Page.cls

neo4j.com/docs

docs.snowflake.net/manuals/index.html

docs.yugabyte.com
github.com/yugabyte/yugabyte-db

Developer

InterSystems

Neo4j, Inc.

Snowflake Computing Inc.

Yugabyte Inc.

Initial release

2001

2018

2007

2014

2017

Current release

2.7.2, June 2023

2023.3, June 2023

5.19, April 2024

2.19, September 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

based on BSD license

commercial

Open Source

GPL version3, commercial licenses available

commercial

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

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.

YugabyteDB Managed is the fully managed database-as-a-service offering of YugabyteDB. Get started quickly, and effortlessly ensure continuous availability and limitless scale of your cloud native applications.

Implementation language

Java

Java, Scala

C and C++

Server operating systems

All OS with a Java VM

Embedded (into Java applications) and Client-Server operating modes

AIX
Linux
macOS
Ubuntu
Windows

Linux

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

hosted

Linux
OS X

Data scheme

yes

depending on used data model

schema-free and schema-optional

yes

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

depending on used data model

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

yes

yes, PostgreSQL compatible

APIs and other access methods

HTTP API

JDBC via HTTP
JDBC
ODBC

JDBC
ODBC
RESTful HTTP API

Bolt protocol
Cypher query language
Java API
Neo4j-OGM

Object Graph Mapper
RESTful HTTP API
Spring Data Neo4j
TinkerPop 3

CLI Client
JDBC
ODBC

JDBC
YCQL, an SQL-based flexible-schema API with its roots in Cassandra Query Language
YSQL - a fully relational SQL API that is wire compatible with the SQL language in PostgreSQL

Supported programming languages

All languages supporting JDBC/ODBC
Java

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

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

JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

C
C#
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby
Rust
Scala

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

Java, SQL

yes

User defined Procedures and Functions

user defined functions

yes

sql, plpgsql, C

Triggers

yes

via event handler

similar concept for controling cloud resources

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Sharding

yes using Neo4j Fabric

yes

Hash and Range Sharding, row-level geo-partitioning

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

none

Source-replica replication

Causal Clustering using Raft protocol

available in in Enterprise Version only

yes

Based on Raft distributed consensus protocol, minimum 3 replicas for continuous availability

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

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

Immediate Consistency

Strong consistency on writes and tunable consistency on reads

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Relationships in graphs

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

Distributed ACID with Serializable & Snapshot Isolation. Inspired by Google Spanner architecture.

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

based on RocksDB

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

yes

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

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

yes

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

InterSystems IRIS is a complete cloud-first data platform which includes a multi-model...
» more

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

YugabyteDB is an open source distributed SQL database for cloud native transactional...
» more

Competitive advantages

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

PostgreSQL compatible: Get instantly productive with a PostgreSQL compatible RDBMS....
» more

Typical application scenarios

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

Systems of record and engagement for cloud native applications that require resilience,...
» 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

2 Million+ lifetime clusters deployed, 6.5K+ GitHub stars, 7K YugabyteDB Community...
» more

Licensing and pricing models

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

Apache 2.0 license for the database
» more

News

Neo4j Joins the Connect with Confluent Partner Program
16 May 2024

10 Inspiring Projects to Spark Your NODES 2024 Presentation
15 May 2024

New Security Feature in Neo4j Aura: Customer Managed Keys
15 May 2024

Safeguarding Elections: How Graph Technology Powers Groundbreaking Research on Political Ads
13 May 2024

This Week in Neo4j: GraphRAG, Testcontainers, Metadata Management, App Dev and more
11 May 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.