DBMS > MaxDB vs. Neo4j vs. Oracle vs. RavenDB vs. Spark SQL

System Properties Comparison MaxDB vs. Neo4j vs. Oracle vs. RavenDB vs. Spark SQL

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

A robust and reliable RDBMS optimized to run all major SAP solutions

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

Widely used RDBMS

Open Source Operational and Transactional Enterprise NoSQL Document Database

Spark SQL is a component on top of 'Spark Core' for structured data processing

Primary database model

Secondary database models

Document store
Graph DBMS

with Oracle Spatial and Graph
RDF store

with Oracle Spatial and Graph
Spatial DBMS

with Oracle Spatial and Graph
Vector DBMS

since Oracle 23

Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS
Time Series DBMS

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

Score	2.26
Rank	#114	Overall
	#55	Relational DBMS

Score	44.89
Rank	#21	Overall
	#1	Graph DBMS

Score	1244.08
Rank	#1	Overall
	#1	Relational DBMS

Score	2.84
Rank	#101	Overall
	#18	Document stores

Score	18.04
Rank	#33	Overall
	#20	Relational DBMS

Website

maxdb.sap.com

neo4j.com

www.oracle.com/database

ravendb.net

spark.apache.org/sql

Technical documentation

maxdb.sap.com/documentation

neo4j.com/docs

docs.oracle.com/en/database

ravendb.net/docs

spark.apache.org/docs/latest/sql-programming-guide.html

Developer

SAP, acquired from Software AG (Adabas-D) in 1997

Neo4j, Inc.

Oracle

Hibernating Rhinos

Apache Software Foundation

Initial release

1984

2007

1980

2010

2014

Current release

7.9.10.12, February 2024

5.20, May 2024

23c, September 2023

5.4, July 2022

3.5.0 ( 2.13), September 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Limited community edition free

Open Source

GPL version3, commercial licenses available

commercial

restricted free version is available

Open Source

AGPL version 3, commercial license available

Open Source

Apache 2.0

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.

Implementation language

C++

Java, Scala

C and C++

Scala

Server operating systems

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
Solaris
Windows

Linux

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

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows
z/OS

Linux
macOS
Raspberry Pi
Windows

Linux
OS X
Windows

Data scheme

yes

schema-free and schema-optional

yes

Schemaless in JSON and XML columns

schema-free

yes

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

with proprietary extensions

SQL-like query language (RQL)

SQL-like DML and DDL statements

APIs and other access methods

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
WebDAV

Bolt protocol
Cypher query language
Java API
Neo4j-OGM

Object Graph Mapper
RESTful HTTP API
Spring Data Neo4j
TinkerPop 3

JDBC
ODBC
ODP.NET
Oracle Call Interface (OCI)

.NET Client API
F# Client API
Go Client API
Java Client API
NodeJS Client API
PHP Client API
Python Client API
RESTful HTTP API

JDBC
ODBC

Supported programming languages

.Net
C#
Java
Perl
PHP
Python

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

C
C#
C++
Clojure
Cobol
Delphi
Eiffel
Erlang
Fortran
Groovy
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Lisp
Objective C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Scala
Tcl
Visual Basic

.Net
C#
F#
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby

Java
Python
R
Scala

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

User defined Procedures and Functions

PL/SQL

also stored procedures in Java possible

yes

Triggers

yes

via event handler

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

yes using Neo4j Fabric

Sharding, horizontal partitioning

Sharding

yes, utilizing Spark Core

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Source-replica replication

Causal Clustering using Raft protocol

available in in Enterprise Version only

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

Multi-source replication

none

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

can be realized in PL/SQL

yes

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

Default ACID transactions on the local node (eventually consistent across the cluster). Atomic operations with cluster-wide ACID transactions. Eventual consistency for indexes and full-text search indexes.

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Relationships in graphs

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

isolation level can be parameterized

ACID, Cluster-wide transaction available

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

Version 12c introduced the new option 'Oracle Database In-Memory'

User concepts

Access control

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Authorization levels configured per client per database

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Neo4j delivers graph technology that has been battle tested for performance and scale...
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Competitive advantages

Neo4j is the market leader, graph database category creator, and the most widely...
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Typical application scenarios

Real-Time Recommendations Master Data Management Identity and Access Management Network...
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Key customers

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

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