DBMS > Memcached vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. NCache vs. Neo4j vs. Rockset

System Properties Comparison Memcached vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. NCache vs. Neo4j vs. Rockset

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

In-memory key-value store, originally intended for caching

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

Open-Source and Enterprise in-memory Key-Value Store

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

A scalable, reliable search and analytics service in the cloud, built on RocksDB

Primary database model

Secondary database models

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

Document store
Search engine

Using distributed Lucene

Relational DBMS
Search engine

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

Score	19.42
Rank	#32	Overall
	#4	Key-value stores

Score	824.29
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	0.94
Rank	#195	Overall
	#29	Key-value stores

Score	44.46
Rank	#23	Overall
	#1	Graph DBMS

Score	0.79
Rank	#211	Overall
	#35	Document stores

Website

www.memcached.org

www.microsoft.com/en-us/sql-server

www.alachisoft.com/ncache

neo4j.com

rockset.com

Technical documentation

github.com/memcached/memcached/wiki

learn.microsoft.com/en-US/sql/sql-server

www.alachisoft.com/resources/docs

neo4j.com/docs

docs.rockset.com

Developer

Danga Interactive

originally developed by Brad Fitzpatrick for LiveJournal

Microsoft

Alachisoft

Neo4j, Inc.

Rockset

Initial release

2003

1989

2005

2007

2019

Current release

1.6.25, March 2024

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

5.3.3, April 2024

5.19, April 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

BSD license

commercial

restricted free version is available

Open Source

Enterprise Edition available

Open Source

GPL version3, commercial licenses available

commercial

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.

Implementation language

C++

C#, .NET, .NET Core, Java

Java, Scala

C++

Server operating systems

FreeBSD
Linux
OS X
Unix
Windows

Linux
Windows

Linux

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

hosted

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free

schema-free and schema-optional

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

partial

Supported data types are Lists, Queues, Hashsets, Dictionary and Counter

yes

dynamic typing

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

ingestion from XML files supported

Secondary indexes

yes

pluggable indexing subsystem, by default Apache Lucene

all fields are automatically indexed

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

SQL-like query syntax and LINQ for searching the cache. Cache Synchronization with SQL Server using SQL dependency.

Read-only SQL queries, including JOINs

APIs and other access methods

Proprietary protocol

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
OLE DB
Tabular Data Stream (TDS)

IDistributedCache
JCache
LINQ
Proprietary native API

Bolt protocol
Cypher query language
Java API
Neo4j-OGM

Object Graph Mapper
RESTful HTTP API
Spring Data Neo4j
TinkerPop 3

HTTP REST

Supported programming languages

.Net
C
C++
ColdFusion
Erlang
Java
Lisp
Lua
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

C#
C++
Delphi
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Visual Basic

.Net
.Net Core
C#
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python
Scala

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

Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

Transact SQL, .NET languages, R, Python and (with SQL Server 2019) Java

support for stored procedures with SQL-Server CLR

yes

User defined Procedures and Functions

Triggers

yes

Notifications

yes

via event handler

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

tables can be distributed across several files (horizontal partitioning); sharding through federation

yes

yes using Neo4j Fabric

Automatic sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

none

Repcached, a Memcached patch, provides this functionallity

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

yes, with selectable consistency level

Causal Clustering using Raft protocol

available in in Enterprise Version only

yes

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
Immediate Consistency
Strong Eventual Consistency over WAN with Conflict Resolution using Bridge Topology

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

Eventual Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Relationships in graphs

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

optimistic locking and pessimistic locking

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

User concepts

Access control

yes

using SASL (Simple Authentication and Security Layer) protocol

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Authentication to access the cache via Active Directory/LDAP (possible roles: user, administrator)

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

Access rights for users and organizations can be defined via Rockset console

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

NCache has been the market leader in .NET Distributed Caching since 2005 . NCache...
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Neo4j delivers graph technology that has been battle tested for performance and scale...
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Competitive advantages

NCache is 100% .NET/ .NET Core based which fully supports ASP.NET Core Sessions ,...
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Neo4j is the market leader, graph database category creator, and the most widely...
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Typical application scenarios

NCache enables industries like retail, finance, banking IoT, travel, ecommerce, healthcare...
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Real-Time Recommendations Master Data Management Identity and Access Management Network...
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Key customers

Bank of America, Citi, Natures Way, Charter Spectrum, Barclays, Henry Schein, GBM,...
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Over 800 commercial customers and over 4300 startups use Neo4j. Flagship customers...
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Market metrics

Market Leader in .NET Distributed Caching since 2005.
» more

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

Licensing and pricing models

NCache Open Source is free on an as-is basis without any support. NCache Enterprise...
» more

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

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