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DBMS > Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs. Neo4j vs. Sphinx vs. Stardog

System Properties Comparison Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs. Neo4j vs. Sphinx vs. Stardog

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines
NameMicrosoft Azure Cosmos DB infoformer name was Azure DocumentDB  Xexclude from comparisonMicrosoft Azure SQL Database infoformerly SQL Azure  Xexclude from comparisonNeo4j  Xexclude from comparisonSphinx  Xexclude from comparisonStardog  Xexclude from comparison
DescriptionGlobally distributed, horizontally scalable, multi-model database serviceDatabase as a Service offering with high compatibility to Microsoft SQL ServerScalable, 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 databasesEnterprise Knowledge Graph platform and graph DBMS with high availability, high performance reasoning, and virtualization
Primary database modelDocument store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store
Wide column store
Relational DBMSGraph DBMSSearch engineGraph DBMS
RDF store
Secondary database modelsSpatial DBMSDocument store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS
DB-Engines Ranking infomeasures the popularity of database management systemsranking trend
Trend Chart
Score30.39
Rank#27  Overall
#4  Document stores
#2  Graph DBMS
#3  Key-value stores
#3  Wide column stores
Score78.51
Rank#15  Overall
#10  Relational DBMS
Score44.36
Rank#23  Overall
#1  Graph DBMS
Score6.06
Rank#61  Overall
#6  Search engines
Score2.03
Rank#136  Overall
#12  Graph DBMS
#6  RDF stores
Websiteazure.microsoft.com/­services/­cosmos-dbazure.microsoft.com/­en-us/­products/­azure-sql/­databaseneo4j.comsphinxsearch.comwww.stardog.com
Technical documentationlearn.microsoft.com/­azure/­cosmos-dbdocs.microsoft.com/­en-us/­azure/­azure-sqlneo4j.com/­docssphinxsearch.com/­docsdocs.stardog.com
DeveloperMicrosoftMicrosoftNeo4j, Inc.Sphinx Technologies Inc.Stardog-Union
Initial release20142010200720012010
Current releaseV125.18.1, March 20243.5.1, February 20237.3.0, May 2020
License infoCommercial or Open SourcecommercialcommercialOpen Source infoGPL version3, commercial licenses availableOpen Source infoGPL version 2, commercial licence availablecommercial info60-day fully-featured trial license; 1-year fully-featured non-commercial use license for academics/students
Cloud-based only infoOnly available as a cloud serviceyesyesnonono
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 languageC++Java, ScalaC++Java
Server operating systemshostedhostedLinux infoCan also be used server-less as embedded Java database.
OS X
Solaris
Windows
FreeBSD
Linux
NetBSD
OS X
Solaris
Windows
Linux
macOS
Windows
Data schemeschema-freeyesschema-free and schema-optionalyesschema-free and OWL/RDFS-schema support
Typing infopredefined data types such as float or dateyes infoJSON typesyesyesnoyes
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.yesno infoImport/export of XML data possible
Secondary indexesyes infoAll properties auto-indexed by defaultyesyes infopluggable indexing subsystem, by default Apache Luceneyes infofull-text index on all search fieldsyes infosupports real-time indexing in full-text and geospatial
SQL infoSupport of SQLSQL-like query languageyesnoSQL-like query language (SphinxQL)Yes, compatible with all major SQL variants through dedicated BI/SQL Server
APIs and other access methodsDocumentDB API
Graph API (Gremlin)
MongoDB API
RESTful HTTP API
Table API
ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
Bolt protocol
Cypher query language
Java API
Neo4j-OGM infoObject Graph Mapper
RESTful HTTP API
Spring Data Neo4j
TinkerPop 3
Proprietary protocolGraphQL 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
.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
.Net
Clojure
Groovy
Java
JavaScript
Python
Ruby
Server-side scripts infoStored proceduresJavaScriptTransact SQLyes infoUser defined Procedures and Functionsnouser defined functions and aggregates, HTTP Server extensions in Java
TriggersJavaScriptyesyes infovia event handlernoyes infovia event handlers
Partitioning methods infoMethods for storing different data on different nodesSharding infoImplicit feature of the cloud serviceyes using Neo4j FabricSharding infoPartitioning is done manually, search queries against distributed index is supportednone
Replication methods infoMethods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodesyes infoImplicit feature of the cloud serviceyes, with always 3 replicas availableCausal Clustering using Raft protocol infoavailable in in Enterprise Version onlynoneMulti-source replication in HA-Cluster
MapReduce infoOffers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methodswith Hadoop integration infoIntegration with Hadoop/HDInsight on Azure*nononono
Consistency concepts infoMethods to ensure consistency in a distributed systemBounded Staleness
Consistent Prefix
Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency infoConsistency level configurable on request level
Session Consistency
Immediate ConsistencyCausal and Eventual Consistency configurable in Causal Cluster setup
Immediate Consistency in stand-alone mode
Immediate Consistency in HA-Cluster
Foreign keys infoReferential integritynoyesyes infoRelationships in graphsnoyes inforelationships in graphs
Transaction concepts infoSupport to ensure data integrity after non-atomic manipulations of dataMulti-item ACID transactions with snapshot isolation within a partitionACIDACIDnoACID
Concurrency infoSupport for concurrent manipulation of datayesyesyesyesyes
Durability infoSupport for making data persistentyesyesyesyes infoThe original contents of fields are not stored in the Sphinx index.yes
In-memory capabilities infoIs there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.yes
User concepts infoAccess controlAccess rights can be defined down to the item levelfine grained access rights according to SQL-standardUsers, roles and permissions. Pluggable authentication with supported standards (LDAP, Active Directory, Kerberos)noAccess rights for users and roles
More information provided by the system vendor
Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB infoformer name was Azure DocumentDBMicrosoft Azure SQL Database infoformerly SQL AzureNeo4jSphinxStardog
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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More resources
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