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DBMS > Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs. Neo4j vs. RethinkDB

System Properties Comparison Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs. Neo4j vs. RethinkDB

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines
NameMicrosoft Azure SQL Database infoformerly SQL Azure  Xexclude from comparisonNeo4j  Xexclude from comparisonRethinkDB  Xexclude from comparison
DescriptionDatabase 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 offeringsDBMS for the Web with a mechanism to push updated query results to applications in realtime.
Primary database modelRelational DBMSGraph DBMSDocument store
Secondary database modelsDocument store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS
Spatial DBMS
DB-Engines Ranking infomeasures the popularity of database management systemsranking trend
Trend Chart
Score75.45
Rank#17  Overall
#12  Relational DBMS
Score47.91
Rank#20  Overall
#1  Graph DBMS
Score2.30
Rank#105  Overall
#19  Document stores
Websiteazure.microsoft.com/­en-us/­products/­azure-sql/­databaseneo4j.comrethinkdb.com
Technical documentationdocs.microsoft.com/­en-us/­azure/­azure-sqlneo4j.com/­docsrethinkdb.com/­docs
DeveloperMicrosoftNeo4j, Inc.The Linux Foundation infosince July 2017
Initial release201020072009
Current releaseV125.23, August 20242.4.1, August 2020
License infoCommercial or Open SourcecommercialOpen Source infoGPL version3, commercial licenses availableOpen Source infoApache Version 2
Cloud-based only infoOnly available as a cloud serviceyesnono
DBaaS offerings (sponsored links) infoDatabase as a Service

Providers of DBaaS offerings, please contact us to be listed.
Implementation languageC++Java, ScalaC++
Server operating systemshostedLinux infoCan also be used server-less as embedded Java database.
OS X
Solaris
Windows
Linux
OS X
Windows
Data schemeyesschema-free and schema-optionalschema-free
Typing infopredefined data types such as float or dateyesyesyes infostring, binary, float, bool, date, geometry
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
Secondary indexesyesyes infopluggable indexing subsystem, by default Apache Luceneyes
SQL infoSupport of SQLyesnono
APIs and other access methodsADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
Bolt protocol
Cypher query language
Java API
Neo4j-OGM infoObject Graph Mapper
RESTful HTTP API
Spring Data Neo4j
TinkerPop 3
Supported programming languages.Net
C#
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby
.Net
Clojure
Elixir
Go
Groovy
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala
C infocommunity-supported driver
C# infocommunity-supported driver
C++ infocommunity-supported driver
Clojure infocommunity-supported driver
Dart infocommunity-supported driver
Erlang infocommunity-supported driver
Go infocommunity-supported driver
Haskell infocommunity-supported driver
Java infoofficial driver
JavaScript (Node.js) infoofficial driver
Lisp infocommunity-supported driver
Lua infocommunity-supported driver
Objective-C infocommunity-supported driver
Perl infocommunity-supported driver
PHP infocommunity-supported driver
Python infoofficial driver
Ruby infoofficial driver
Scala infocommunity-supported driver
Server-side scripts infoStored proceduresTransact SQLyes infoUser defined Procedures and Functions
Triggersyesyes infovia event handlerClient-side triggers through changefeeds
Partitioning methods infoMethods for storing different data on different nodesyes using Neo4j FabricSharding inforange based
Replication methods infoMethods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodesyes, with always 3 replicas availableCausal Clustering using Raft protocol infoavailable in in Enterprise Version onlySource-replica replication
MapReduce infoOffers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methodsnonoyes
Consistency concepts infoMethods to ensure consistency in a distributed systemImmediate ConsistencyCausal and Eventual Consistency configurable in Causal Cluster setup
Immediate Consistency in stand-alone mode
Immediate Consistency
Foreign keys infoReferential integrityyesyes infoRelationships in graphsno
Transaction concepts infoSupport to ensure data integrity after non-atomic manipulations of dataACIDACIDAtomic single-document operations
Concurrency infoSupport for concurrent manipulation of datayesyesyes infoMVCC based
Durability infoSupport for making data persistentyesyesyes
In-memory capabilities infoIs there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.no
User concepts infoAccess controlfine grained access rights according to SQL-standardUsers, roles and permissions. Pluggable authentication with supported standards (LDAP, Active Directory, Kerberos)yes infousers and table-level permissions
More information provided by the system vendor
Microsoft Azure SQL Database infoformerly SQL AzureNeo4jRethinkDB
News

Integrating Neo4j With LangChain4j for GraphRAG Vector Stores and Retrievers
12 May 2025

This Week in Neo4j: NODES, Knowledge Graph, Graph Analytics, MCP and more
10 May 2025

Aura Graph Analytics: A Technical Deep Dive
7 May 2025

Introducing Neo4j Aura Graph Analytics: Scalable, Easy-to-Deploy Graph Analytics for Any Data Source
7 May 2025

Agentic GraphRAG for Commercial Contracts
5 May 2025

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More resources
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