DBMS > Informix vs. Neo4j vs. OpenSearch vs. Oracle NoSQL vs. OrientDB

System Properties Comparison Informix vs. Neo4j vs. OpenSearch vs. Oracle NoSQL vs. OrientDB

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

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

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

A multi-model, scalable, distributed NoSQL database, designed to provide highly reliable, flexible, and available data management across a configurable set of storage nodes

Multi-model DBMS (Document, Graph, Key/Value)

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

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

Graph DBMS

Search engine

Document store
Key-value store
Relational DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store

Secondary database models

Document store
Spatial DBMS
Time Series DBMS

with Informix TimeSeries Extension

Vector DBMS

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

Score	17.12
Rank	#34	Overall
	#21	Relational DBMS

Score	44.89
Rank	#21	Overall
	#1	Graph DBMS

Score	16.03
Rank	#37	Overall
	#4	Search engines

Score	3.05
Rank	#97	Overall
	#17	Document stores
	#16	Key-value stores
	#50	Relational DBMS

Score	3.25
Rank	#89	Overall
	#16	Document stores
	#6	Graph DBMS
	#13	Key-value stores

Website

www.ibm.com/products/informix

neo4j.com

github.com/opensearch-project
opensearch.org

www.oracle.com/database/nosql/technologies/nosql

orientdb.org

Technical documentation

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

neo4j.com/docs

opensearch.org/docs/latest

docs.oracle.com/en/database/other-databases/nosql-database/index.html

www.orientdb.com/docs/last/index.html

Developer

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.

Amazon Web Services

Oracle

OrientDB LTD; CallidusCloud; SAP

Initial release

1984

2007

2021

2011

2010

Current release

14.10.FC5, November 2020

5.20, May 2024

2.5.0, January 2023

23.3, December 2023

3.2.29, March 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free developer edition available

Open Source

GPL version3, commercial licenses available

Open Source

Apache Version 2.0

Open Source

Proprietary for Enterprise Edition (Oracle Database EE license has Oracle NoSQL database EE covered: details)

Open Source

Apache version 2

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.

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

C, C++ and Java

Java, Scala

Java

Server operating systems

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
macOS
Solaris
Windows

Linux

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

All OS with a Java VM

Linux
Solaris SPARC/x86

All OS with a Java JDK (>= JDK 6)

Data scheme

yes

schema-free and schema-optional

schema-free

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

Support Fixed schema and Schema-less deployment with the ability to interoperate between them.

schema-free

Schema can be enforced for whole record ("schema-full") or for some fields only ("schema-hybrid")

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

Since Version 12.10 support for JSON/BSON datatypes

yes

optional

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.

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

SQL-like DML and DDL statements

SQL-like query language, no joins

APIs and other access methods

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

Java API
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

RESTful HTTP API

Tinkerpop technology stack with Blueprints, Gremlin, Pipes
Java API
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Supported programming languages

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

.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#
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

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

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

User defined Procedures and Functions

yes

Java, Javascript

Triggers

yes

via event handler

yes

by using the 'percolation' feature

Hooks

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

yes using Neo4j Fabric

Sharding

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

yes

Electable source-replica replication per shard. Support distributed global deployment with Multi-region table feature

Multi-source replication

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

with Hadoop integration

could be achieved with distributed queries

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

Eventual Consistency

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

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

depending on configuration

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Relationships in graphs

yes

relationship in graphs

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

configurable

ACID within a storage node (=shard)

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

off heap cache

User concepts

Access control

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

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

Access rights for users and roles

Access rights for users and roles; record level security configurable

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...
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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

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