DBMS > Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. Neo4j vs. QuestDB vs. Transbase

System Properties Comparison Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. Neo4j vs. QuestDB vs. Transbase

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Elastic, large scale data warehouse service leveraging the broad eco-system of SQL Server

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

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

A high performance open source SQL database for time series data

A resource-optimized, high-performance, universally applicable RDBMS

Primary database model

Secondary database models

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

Relational DBMS

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

Score	20.56
Rank	#31	Overall
	#19	Relational DBMS

Score	824.29
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	44.46
Rank	#23	Overall
	#1	Graph DBMS

Score	2.52
Rank	#109	Overall
	#9	Time Series DBMS

Score	0.11
Rank	#341	Overall
	#150	Relational DBMS

Website

azure.microsoft.com/services/synapse-analytics

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

neo4j.com

questdb.io

www.transaction.de/en/products/transbase.html

Technical documentation

docs.microsoft.com/azure/synapse-analytics

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

neo4j.com/docs

questdb.io/docs

www.transaction.de/en/products/transbase/features.html

Developer

Microsoft

Neo4j, Inc.

QuestDB Technology Inc

Transaction Software GmbH

Initial release

2016

1989

2007

2014

1987

Current release

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

5.20, May 2024

Transbase 8.3, 2022

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

restricted free version is available

Open Source

GPL version3, commercial licenses available

Open Source

Apache 2.0

commercial

free development license

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.

SQLServer Flex @ STACKIT offers a managed version of SQL Server with adjustable CPU, RAM, storage amount and speed, in enterprise grade to perfectly match all application requirements. All services are 100% GDPR-compliant.

Neo4j Aura: Neo4j’s fully managed cloud service: The zero-admin, always-on graph database for cloud developers.

Implementation language

C++

Java, Scala

Java (Zero-GC), C++, Rust

C and C++

Server operating systems

hosted

Linux
Windows

Linux

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

Linux
macOS
Windows

FreeBSD
Linux
macOS
Solaris
Windows

Data scheme

yes

schema-free and schema-optional

yes

schema-free via InfluxDB Line Protocol

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

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

Secondary indexes

yes

pluggable indexing subsystem, by default Apache Lucene

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

SQL with time-series extensions

yes

APIs and other access methods

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC

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

Bolt protocol
Cypher query language
Java API
Neo4j-OGM

Object Graph Mapper
RESTful HTTP API
Spring Data Neo4j
TinkerPop 3

HTTP REST
InfluxDB Line Protocol (TCP/UDP)
JDBC
PostgreSQL wire protocol

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary native API

Supported programming languages

C#
Java
PHP

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

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

PostgreSQL driver
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python
Rust

over HTTP

C
C#
C++
Java
JavaScript
Kotlin
Objective-C
PHP
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

Transact SQL

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

yes

User defined Procedures and Functions

yes

Triggers

yes

via event handler

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding, horizontal partitioning

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

yes using Neo4j Fabric

horizontal partitioning (by timestamps)

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

Causal Clustering using Raft protocol

available in in Enterprise Version only

Source-replica replication with eventual consistency

Source-replica replication

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

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

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/synapse-analytics/sql-data-warehouse/sql-data-warehouse-table-constraints

yes

Relationships in graphs

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

ACID for single-table writes

yes

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

through memory mapped files

User concepts

Access control

yes

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Neo4j delivers graph technology that has been battle tested for performance and scale...
» more

Relational model with native time series support Column-based storage and time partitioned...
» more

Competitive advantages

Neo4j is the market leader, graph database category creator, and the most widely...
» more

High ingestion throughput: peak of 4M rows/sec (TSBS Benchmark) Code optimizations...
» more

Typical application scenarios

Real-Time Recommendations Master Data Management Identity and Access Management Network...
» more

Financial tick data Industrial IoT Application Metrics Monitoring
» more

Key customers

Over 800 commercial customers and over 4300 startups use Neo4j. Flagship customers...
» more

Banks & Hedge funds, Yahoo, OKX, Airbus, Aquis Exchange, Net App, Cloudera, Airtel,...
» more

Market metrics

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

Licensing and pricing models

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

Open source Apache 2.0 QuestDB Enterprise QuestDB Cloud
» more

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and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.