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DBMS > Microsoft Azure AI Search vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Neo4j vs. Sphinx

System Properties Comparison Microsoft Azure AI Search vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Neo4j vs. Sphinx

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines
NameMicrosoft Azure AI Search  Xexclude from comparisonMicrosoft Azure Cosmos DB infoformer name was Azure DocumentDB  Xexclude from comparisonNeo4j  Xexclude from comparisonSphinx  Xexclude from comparison
DescriptionSearch-as-a-service for web and mobile app developmentGlobally distributed, horizontally scalable, multi-model database serviceScalable, ACID-compliant graph database designed with a high-performance distributed cluster architecture, available in self-hosted and cloud offeringsOpen source search engine for searching in data from different sources, e.g. relational databases
Primary database modelSearch engineDocument store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store
Wide column store
Graph DBMSSearch engine
Secondary database modelsVector DBMSSpatial DBMS
DB-Engines Ranking infomeasures the popularity of database management systemsranking trend
Trend Chart
Score5.71
Rank#64  Overall
#8  Search engines
Score29.85
Rank#27  Overall
#4  Document stores
#2  Graph DBMS
#3  Key-value stores
#3  Wide column stores
Score44.47
Rank#23  Overall
#1  Graph DBMS
Score6.03
Rank#60  Overall
#6  Search engines
Websiteazure.microsoft.com/­en-us/­services/­searchazure.microsoft.com/­services/­cosmos-dbneo4j.comsphinxsearch.com
Technical documentationlearn.microsoft.com/­en-us/­azure/­searchlearn.microsoft.com/­azure/­cosmos-dbneo4j.com/­docssphinxsearch.com/­docs
DeveloperMicrosoftMicrosoftNeo4j, Inc.Sphinx Technologies Inc.
Initial release2015201420072001
Current releaseV15.19, April 20243.5.1, February 2023
License infoCommercial or Open SourcecommercialcommercialOpen Source infoGPL version3, commercial licenses availableOpen Source infoGPL version 2, commercial licence available
Cloud-based only infoOnly available as a cloud serviceyesyesnono
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 languageJava, ScalaC++
Server operating systemshostedhostedLinux infoCan also be used server-less as embedded Java database.
OS X
Solaris
Windows
FreeBSD
Linux
NetBSD
OS X
Solaris
Windows
Data schemeyesschema-freeschema-free and schema-optionalyes
Typing infopredefined data types such as float or dateyesyes infoJSON typesyesno
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.no
Secondary indexesyesyes infoAll properties auto-indexed by defaultyes infopluggable indexing subsystem, by default Apache Luceneyes infofull-text index on all search fields
SQL infoSupport of SQLnoSQL-like query languagenoSQL-like query language (SphinxQL)
APIs and other access methodsRESTful HTTP APIDocumentDB API
Graph API (Gremlin)
MongoDB API
RESTful HTTP API
Table API
Bolt protocol
Cypher query language
Java API
Neo4j-OGM infoObject Graph Mapper
RESTful HTTP API
Spring Data Neo4j
TinkerPop 3
Proprietary protocol
Supported programming languagesC#
Java
JavaScript
Python
.Net
C#
Java
JavaScript
JavaScript (Node.js)
MongoDB client drivers written for various programming languages
Python
.Net
Clojure
Elixir
Go
Groovy
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala
C++ infounofficial client library
Java
Perl infounofficial client library
PHP
Python
Ruby infounofficial client library
Server-side scripts infoStored proceduresnoJavaScriptyes infoUser defined Procedures and Functionsno
TriggersnoJavaScriptyes infovia event handlerno
Partitioning methods infoMethods for storing different data on different nodesSharding infoImplicit feature of the cloud serviceSharding infoImplicit feature of the cloud serviceyes using Neo4j FabricSharding infoPartitioning is done manually, search queries against distributed index is supported
Replication methods infoMethods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodesyes infoImplicit feature of the cloud serviceyes infoImplicit feature of the cloud serviceCausal Clustering using Raft protocol infoavailable in in Enterprise Version onlynone
MapReduce infoOffers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methodsnowith Hadoop integration infoIntegration with Hadoop/HDInsight on Azure*nono
Consistency concepts infoMethods to ensure consistency in a distributed systemImmediate ConsistencyBounded Staleness
Consistent Prefix
Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency infoConsistency level configurable on request level
Session Consistency
Causal and Eventual Consistency configurable in Causal Cluster setup
Immediate Consistency in stand-alone mode
Foreign keys infoReferential integritynonoyes infoRelationships in graphsno
Transaction concepts infoSupport to ensure data integrity after non-atomic manipulations of datanoMulti-item ACID transactions with snapshot isolation within a partitionACIDno
Concurrency infoSupport for concurrent manipulation of datayesyesyesyes
Durability infoSupport for making data persistentyesyesyesyes 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.no
User concepts infoAccess controlyes infousing Azure authenticationAccess rights can be defined down to the item levelUsers, roles and permissions. Pluggable authentication with supported standards (LDAP, Active Directory, Kerberos)no
More information provided by the system vendor
Microsoft Azure AI SearchMicrosoft Azure Cosmos DB infoformer name was Azure DocumentDBNeo4jSphinx
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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