DBMS > Lovefield vs. Neo4j vs. ScyllaDB vs. Snowflake vs. Stardog

System Properties Comparison Lovefield vs. Neo4j vs. ScyllaDB vs. Snowflake vs. Stardog

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Embeddable relational database for web apps written in pure JavaScript

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

Cassandra and DynamoDB compatible wide column store

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

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

Primary database model

Secondary database models

Key-value store

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

Score	0.29
Rank	#293	Overall
	#133	Relational DBMS

Score	44.46
Rank	#23	Overall
	#1	Graph DBMS

Score	4.75
Rank	#68	Overall
	#5	Wide column stores

Score	121.33
Rank	#9	Overall
	#6	Relational DBMS

Score	2.02
Rank	#123	Overall
	#11	Graph DBMS
	#6	RDF stores

Website

google.github.io/lovefield

Technical documentation

github.com/google/lovefield/blob/master/docs/spec_index.md

neo4j.com/docs

docs.scylladb.com

docs.snowflake.net/manuals/index.html

docs.stardog.com

Developer

Google

Neo4j, Inc.

ScyllaDB

Snowflake Computing Inc.

Stardog-Union

Initial release

2014

2007

2015

2014

2010

Current release

2.1.12, February 2017

5.19, April 2024

ScyllaDB Open Source 5.4.1, January 2024

7.3.0, May 2020

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

GPL version3, commercial licenses available

Open Source

Open Source (AGPL), commercial license 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

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.

Scylla Cloud: Create real-time applications that run at global scale with Scylla Cloud, the industry’s most powerful NoSQL DBaaS

Implementation language

JavaScript

Java, Scala

C++

Java

Server operating systems

server-less, requires a JavaScript environment (browser, Node.js)

tested with Chrome, Firefox, IE, Safari

Linux

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

Linux

hosted

Linux
macOS
Windows

Data scheme

yes

schema-free and schema-optional

schema-free

yes

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

schema-free and OWL/RDFS-schema support

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

Import/export of XML data possible

Secondary indexes

yes

pluggable indexing subsystem, by default Apache Lucene

yes

cluster global secondary indices

yes

supports real-time indexing in full-text and geospatial

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like query language

via JavaScript builder pattern

SQL-like DML and DDL statements (CQL)

yes

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

APIs and other access methods

Bolt protocol
Cypher query language
Java API
Neo4j-OGM

Object Graph Mapper
RESTful HTTP API
Spring Data Neo4j
TinkerPop 3

Proprietary protocol (CQL)

compatible with CQL (Cassandra Query Language, an SQL-like language)
RESTful HTTP API (DynamoDB compatible)
Thrift

CLI Client
JDBC
ODBC

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

JavaScript

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

For CQL interface: C#, C++, Clojure, Erlang, Go, Haskell, Java, JavaScript, Node.js, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, Rust, Scala
For DynamoDB interface: .Net, ColdFusion, Erlang, Groovy, Java, JavaScript, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby

JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

.Net
Clojure
Groovy
Java
JavaScript
Python
Ruby

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

User defined Procedures and Functions

yes, Lua

user defined functions

user defined functions and aggregates, HTTP Server extensions in Java

Triggers

Using read-only observers

yes

via event handler

similar concept for controling cloud resources

yes

via event handlers

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

yes using Neo4j Fabric

Sharding

yes

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

none

Causal Clustering using Raft protocol

available in in Enterprise Version only

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

yes

Multi-source replication in HA-Cluster

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

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

Eventual Consistency
Tunable Consistency

can be individually decided for each write operation

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

ACID

Atomicity and isolation are supported for single operations

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes, by using IndexedDB or the cloud service Firebase Realtime Database

yes

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

using MemoryDB

yes

in-memory tables

yes

User concepts

Access control

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

Access rights for users can be defined per object

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

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...
» more

ScyllaDB is engineered to deliver predictable performance at scale. It’s adopted...
» more

Competitive advantages

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

Highly-performant (efficiently utilizes full resources of a node and network; millions...
» more

Typical application scenarios

Real-Time Recommendations Master Data Management Identity and Access Management Network...
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ScyllaDB is ideal for applications that require high throughput and low latency at...
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Key customers

Over 800 commercial customers and over 4300 startups use Neo4j. Flagship customers...
» more

Discord, Epic Games, Expedia, Zillow, Comcast, Disney+ Hotstar, Samsung, ShareChat,...
» more

Market metrics

Neo4j boasts the world's largest graph database ecosystem with more than 140 million...
» more

ScyllaDB typically offers ~75% total cost of ownership savings, with ~5X higher throughput...
» more

Licensing and pricing models

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

ScyllaDB Open Source - free open source software (AGPL) ScyllaDB Enterprise - subscription-based...
» more

News

This Week in Neo4j: GraphRAG, Knowledge Graphs, Open Source AI, GraphQL and more
4 May 2024

This Week in Neo4j: Nodes 2024, Data Modelling, Events, Knowledge Graphs and more
27 April 2024

GQL is Here: Your Cypher Queries in a GQL World
26 April 2024

GQL: The ISO Standard for Graphs Has Arrived
25 April 2024

What Is Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)?
24 April 2024

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