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DBMS > Lovefield vs. Neo4j vs. NSDb vs. RDF4J vs. Sphinx

System Properties Comparison Lovefield vs. Neo4j vs. NSDb vs. RDF4J vs. Sphinx

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines
NameLovefield  Xexclude from comparisonNeo4j  Xexclude from comparisonNSDb  Xexclude from comparisonRDF4J infoformerly known as Sesame  Xexclude from comparisonSphinx  Xexclude from comparison
DescriptionEmbeddable relational database for web apps written in pure JavaScriptScalable, ACID-compliant graph database designed with a high-performance distributed cluster architecture, available in self-hosted and cloud offeringsScalable, High-performance Time Series DBMS designed for Real-time Analytics on top of KubernetesRDF4J is a Java framework for processing RDF data, supporting both memory-based and a disk-based storage.Open source search engine for searching in data from different sources, e.g. relational databases
Primary database modelRelational DBMSGraph DBMSTime Series DBMSRDF storeSearch engine
DB-Engines Ranking infomeasures the popularity of database management systemsranking trend
Trend Chart
Score0.29
Rank#293  Overall
#133  Relational DBMS
Score44.46
Rank#23  Overall
#1  Graph DBMS
Score0.00
Rank#383  Overall
#41  Time Series DBMS
Score0.69
Rank#230  Overall
#9  RDF stores
Score5.98
Rank#56  Overall
#5  Search engines
Websitegoogle.github.io/­lovefieldneo4j.comnsdb.iordf4j.orgsphinxsearch.com
Technical documentationgithub.com/­google/­lovefield/­blob/­master/­docs/­spec_index.mdneo4j.com/­docsnsdb.io/­Architecturerdf4j.org/­documentationsphinxsearch.com/­docs
DeveloperGoogleNeo4j, Inc.Since 2016 officially forked into an Eclipse project, former developer was Aduna Software.Sphinx Technologies Inc.
Initial release20142007201720042001
Current release2.1.12, February 20175.19, April 20243.5.1, February 2023
License infoCommercial or Open SourceOpen Source infoApache 2.0Open Source infoGPL version3, commercial licenses availableOpen Source infoApache Version 2.0Open Source infoEclipse Distribution License (EDL), v1.0.Open Source infoGPL version 2, commercial licence available
Cloud-based only infoOnly available as a cloud servicenonononono
DBaaS offerings (sponsored links) infoDatabase 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 languageJavaScriptJava, ScalaJava, ScalaJavaC++
Server operating systemsserver-less, requires a JavaScript environment (browser, Node.js) infotested with Chrome, Firefox, IE, SafariLinux infoCan also be used server-less as embedded Java database.
OS X
Solaris
Windows
Linux
macOS
Linux
OS X
Unix
Windows
FreeBSD
Linux
NetBSD
OS X
Solaris
Windows
Data schemeyesschema-free and schema-optionalyes infoRDF Schemasyes
Typing infopredefined data types such as float or dateyesyesyes: int, bigint, decimal, stringyesno
XML support infoSome form of processing data in XML format, e.g. support for XML data structures, and/or support for XPath, XQuery or XSLT.nono
Secondary indexesyesyes infopluggable indexing subsystem, by default Apache Luceneall fields are automatically indexedyesyes infofull-text index on all search fields
SQL infoSupport of SQLSQL-like query language infovia JavaScript builder patternnoSQL-like query languagenoSQL-like query language (SphinxQL)
APIs and other access methodsBolt protocol
Cypher query language
Java API
Neo4j-OGM infoObject Graph Mapper
RESTful HTTP API
Spring Data Neo4j
TinkerPop 3
gRPC
HTTP REST
WebSocket
Java API
RIO infoRDF Input/Output
Sail API
SeRQL infoSesame RDF Query Language
Sesame REST HTTP Protocol
SPARQL
Proprietary protocol
Supported programming languagesJavaScript.Net
Clojure
Elixir
Go
Groovy
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala
Java
Scala
Java
PHP
Python
C++ infounofficial client library
Java
Perl infounofficial client library
PHP
Python
Ruby infounofficial client library
Server-side scripts infoStored proceduresnoyes infoUser defined Procedures and Functionsnoyesno
TriggersUsing read-only observersyes infovia event handleryesno
Partitioning methods infoMethods for storing different data on different nodesnoneyes using Neo4j FabricShardingnoneSharding infoPartitioning is done manually, search queries against distributed index is supported
Replication methods infoMethods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodesnoneCausal Clustering using Raft protocol infoavailable in in Enterprise Version onlynonenone
MapReduce infoOffers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methodsnonononono
Consistency concepts infoMethods to ensure consistency in a distributed systemCausal and Eventual Consistency configurable in Causal Cluster setup
Immediate Consistency in stand-alone mode
Eventual Consistency
Foreign keys infoReferential integrityyesyes infoRelationships in graphsnono
Transaction concepts infoSupport to ensure data integrity after non-atomic manipulations of dataACIDACIDnoACID infoIsolation support depends on the API usedno
Concurrency infoSupport for concurrent manipulation of datayesyesyesyesyes
Durability infoSupport for making data persistentyes, by using IndexedDB or the cloud service Firebase Realtime DatabaseyesUsing Apache Luceneyes infoin-memory storage is supported as wellyes infoThe original contents of fields are not stored in the Sphinx index.
In-memory capabilities infoIs there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.yes infousing MemoryDB
User concepts infoAccess controlnoUsers, roles and permissions. Pluggable authentication with supported standards (LDAP, Active Directory, Kerberos)nono
More information provided by the system vendor
LovefieldNeo4jNSDbRDF4J infoformerly known as SesameSphinx
Specific characteristicsNeo4j delivers graph technology that has been battle tested for performance and scale...
» more
Competitive advantagesNeo4j is the market leader, graph database category creator, and the most widely...
» more
Typical application scenariosReal-Time Recommendations Master Data Management Identity and Access Management Network...
» more
Key customersOver 800 commercial customers and over 4300 startups use Neo4j. Flagship customers...
» more
Market metricsNeo4j boasts the world's largest graph database ecosystem with more than 140 million...
» more
Licensing and pricing modelsGPL v3 license that can be used all the places where you might use MySQL. Neo4j Commercial...
» more
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