DBMS > Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. NebulaGraph vs. Stardog

System Properties Comparison Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. NebulaGraph vs. Stardog

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Globally distributed, horizontally scalable, multi-model database service

Database as a Service offering with high compatibility to Microsoft SQL Server

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

A distributed, linear scalable, high perfomant Graph DBMS

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

Primary database model

Document store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store
Wide column store

Relational DBMS

Graph DBMS

Graph DBMS
RDF store

Secondary database models

Spatial DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	29.04
Rank	#27	Overall
	#4	Document stores
	#2	Graph DBMS
	#3	Key-value stores
	#3	Wide column stores

Score	77.99
Rank	#16	Overall
	#11	Relational DBMS

Score	824.29
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	2.14
Rank	#120	Overall
	#10	Graph DBMS

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

Website

azure.microsoft.com/services/cosmos-db

azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/azure-sql/database

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

github.com/vesoft-inc/nebula
www.nebula-graph.io

www.stardog.com

Technical documentation

learn.microsoft.com/azure/cosmos-db

docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-sql

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

docs.nebula-graph.io

docs.stardog.com

Developer

Microsoft

Vesoft Inc.

Stardog-Union

Initial release

2014

2010

1989

2019

2010

Current release

V12

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

7.3.0, May 2020

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

restricted free version is available

Open Source

Apache Version 2.0 + Common Clause 1.0

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.

Implementation language

C++

Java

Server operating systems

hosted

Linux
Windows

Linux

Linux
macOS
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

Strong typed schema

schema-free and OWL/RDFS-schema support

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

JSON types

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

All properties auto-indexed by default

yes

Nebula Graph internally uses the Key-Value store RocksDB for persistency. The vertices, edges, and their properties are stored as Key while their values are stored as Value. The primary indexes are per Key and secondary indexes are per Value.

yes

supports real-time indexing in full-text and geospatial

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like query language

yes

SQL-like query language

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

APIs and other access methods

DocumentDB API
Graph API (Gremlin)
MongoDB API
RESTful HTTP API
Table API

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC

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

Browser interface
console (shell)
Cypher Query Language
GO Object Graph Mapper
Java Object Graph Mapper
NGBatis

ORM framework for NebulaGraph and Spring-Boot
Proprietary native API
Python Object Graph Mapper
Query language nGQL

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

.Net
C#
Java
JavaScript
JavaScript (Node.js)
MongoDB client drivers written for various programming languages
Python

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

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

.Net
C++
Go
Java
PHP
Python

.Net
Clojure
Groovy
Java
JavaScript
Python
Ruby

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

JavaScript

Transact SQL

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

user defined functions

user defined functions and aggregates, HTTP Server extensions in Java

Triggers

JavaScript

yes

via event handlers

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

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

Sharding

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

yes, with always 3 replicas available

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

Causal Clustering using Raft protocol

Multi-source replication in HA-Cluster

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

with Hadoop integration

Integration with Hadoop/HDInsight on Azure*

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Bounded Staleness
Consistent Prefix
Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Consistency level configurable on request level
Session Consistency

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

Multi-item ACID transactions with snapshot isolation within a partition

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

using RocksDB

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

Access rights can be defined down to the item level

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Role-based access control

Access rights for users and roles

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

NebulaGraph is a truly distributed, linearly scalable, lightning-fast graph database,...
» more

Competitive advantages

NebulaGraph boasts the world's only graph database solution that is able to host...
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Typical application scenarios

Social networking Fraud detection Knowledge graph Data warehouse management Anti...
» more

Key customers

Companies from a variety of industries have implemented NebulaGraph Database in production,...
» more

Market metrics

At our very early stage, NebulaGraph has already received over 10,000 stars on GitHub...
» more

Licensing and pricing models

NebulaGraph is open source and free to use under Apache 2.0 license.
» more

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