DBMS > MariaDB vs. MongoDB vs. mSQL vs. Neo4j

System Properties Comparison MariaDB vs. MongoDB vs. mSQL vs. Neo4j

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

MySQL application compatible open source RDBMS, enhanced with high availability, security, interoperability and performance capabilities. MariaDB ColumnStore provides a column-oriented storage engine and MariaDB Xpand supports distributed SQL.

One of the most popular document stores available both as a fully managed cloud service and for deployment on self-managed infrastructure

mSQL (Mini SQL) is a simple and lightweight RDBMS

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

Primary database model

Secondary database models

Document store
Graph DBMS

with OQGraph storage engine
Spatial DBMS

Spatial DBMS
Search engine

integrated Lucene index, currently in MongoDB Atlas only.
Time Series DBMS

Time Series Collections introduced in Release 5.0
Vector DBMS

currently available in the MongoDB Atlas cloud service only

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

Score	93.81
Rank	#13	Overall
	#9	Relational DBMS

Score	423.96
Rank	#5	Overall
	#1	Document stores

Score	1.67
Rank	#151	Overall
	#70	Relational DBMS

Score	44.47
Rank	#23	Overall
	#1	Graph DBMS

Website

mariadb.com

Site of MariaDB Corporation
mariadb.org

Site of MariaDB Foundation

www.mongodb.com

hughestech.com.au/products/msql

neo4j.com

Technical documentation

mariadb.com/kb/en/library

www.mongodb.com/docs/manual

neo4j.com/docs

Developer

MariaDB Corporation Ab (MariaDB Enterprise),
MariaDB Foundation (community MariaDB Server)

The lead developer Monty Widenius is the original author of MySQL

MongoDB, Inc

Hughes Technologies

Neo4j, Inc.

Initial release

2009

Fork of MySQL, which was first released in 1995

2009

1994

2007

Current release

11.3.2, February 2024

6.0.7, June 2023

4.4, October 2021

5.19, April 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

GPL version 2, commercial enterprise subscription available

Open Source

MongoDB Inc.'s Server Side Public License v1. Prior versions were published under GNU AGPL v3.0. Commercial licenses are also available.

commercial

free licenses can be provided

Open Source

GPL version3, commercial licenses available

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

MongoDB available as DBaaS (MongoDB Atlas)

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

Providers of DBaaS offerings, please contact us to be listed.

MongoDB Atlas: Global multi-cloud database with unmatched data distribution and mobility across AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, built-in automation for resource and workload optimization, and so much more.

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

Implementation language

C and C++

C++

Java, Scala

Server operating systems

FreeBSD
Linux
Solaris
Windows

ColumnStore storage engine not available on Windows

Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
Solaris SPARC/x86
Windows

Linux

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

Data scheme

yes

Dynamic columns are supported

schema-free

Although schema-free, documents of the same collection often follow the same structure. Optionally impose all or part of a schema by defining a JSON schema.

yes

schema-free and schema-optional

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

string, integer, double, decimal, boolean, date, object_id, geospatial

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

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

with proprietary extensions

Read-only SQL queries via the MongoDB Atlas SQL Interface

A subset of ANSI SQL is implemented

no subqueries, aggregate functions, views, foreign keys, triggers

APIs and other access methods

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary native API

GraphQL
HTTP REST
Prisma
proprietary protocol using JSON

JDBC
ODBC

Bolt protocol
Cypher query language
Java API
Neo4j-OGM

Object Graph Mapper
RESTful HTTP API
Spring Data Neo4j
TinkerPop 3

Supported programming languages

Ada
C
C#
C++
D
Eiffel
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl

Actionscript

unofficial driver
C
C#
C++
Clojure

unofficial driver
ColdFusion

unofficial driver
D

unofficial driver
Dart

unofficial driver
Delphi

unofficial driver
Erlang
Go
Groovy

unofficial driver
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Kotlin
Lisp

unofficial driver
Lua

unofficial driver
MatLab

unofficial driver
Perl
PHP
PowerShell

unofficial driver
Prolog

unofficial driver
Python
R

unofficial driver
Ruby
Rust
Scala
Smalltalk

unofficial driver
Swift

C
C++
Delphi
Java
Perl
PHP
Tcl

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

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

PL/SQL compatibility added with version 10.3

JavaScript

yes

User defined Procedures and Functions

Triggers

yes

in MongoDB Atlas only

yes

via event handler

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

several options for horizontal partitioning and Sharding

Sharding

Partitioned by hashed, ranged, or zoned sharding keys. Live resharding allows users to change their shard keys as an online operation with zero downtime.

none

yes using Neo4j Fabric

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

Multi-Source deployments with MongoDB Atlas Global Clusters
Source-replica replication

none

Causal Clustering using Raft protocol

available in in Enterprise Version only

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency

can be individually decided for each read operation
Immediate Consistency

default behaviour

none

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

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

not for MyISAM storage engine

typically not used, however similar functionality with DBRef possible

yes

Relationships in graphs

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

not for MyISAM storage engine

Multi-document ACID Transactions with snapshot isolation

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

not for in-memory storage engine

yes

optional, enabled by default

yes

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

with MEMORY storage engine

yes

In-memory storage engine introduced with MongoDB version 3.2

User concepts

Access control

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Access rights for users and roles

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

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

MariaDB is the most powerful open source relational database – modern SQL and JSON...
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MongoDB provides an integrated suite of cloud database and data services to accelerate...
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Neo4j delivers graph technology that has been battle tested for performance and scale...
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Competitive advantages

MariaDB Servers have many features unavailable in other open source relational databases....
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Built around the flexible document data model and unified API, MongoDB is a developer...
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Neo4j is the market leader, graph database category creator, and the most widely...
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Typical application scenarios

Web, SaaS and Cloud operational applications that require high availability, scalability...
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AI-enriched intelligent apps (Continental, Telefonica, Iron Mountain) Internet of...
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Real-Time Recommendations Master Data Management Identity and Access Management Network...
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Key customers

Deutsche Bank, DBS Bank, Nasdaq, Red Hat, ServiceNow, Verizon and Walgreens Featured...
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ADP, Adobe, Amadeus, AstraZeneca, Auto Trader, Barclays, BBVA, Bosch, Cisco, CERN,...
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Over 800 commercial customers and over 4300 startups use Neo4j. Flagship customers...
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Market metrics

MariaDB is the default database in the LAMP stack supplied by Red Hat and SUSE Linux,...
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Hundreds of millions downloads, over 150,000+ Atlas clusters provisioned every month...
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Neo4j boasts the world's largest graph database ecosystem with more than 140 million...
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Licensing and pricing models

MariaDB plc subscriptions cover our free, open source database, Community Server,...
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MongoDB database server: Server-Side Public License (SSPL) . Commercial licenses...
» more

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

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