DBMS > Microsoft SQL Server vs. MonetDB vs. Neo4j vs. RavenDB vs. TiDB

System Properties Comparison Microsoft SQL Server vs. MonetDB vs. Neo4j vs. RavenDB vs. TiDB

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

A relational database management system that stores data in columns

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

Open Source Operational and Transactional Enterprise NoSQL Document Database

TiDB is an open source distributed SQL database that supports Hybrid Transactional/Analytical Processing (HTAP) workloads. It is MySQL compatible and features horizontal scalability, strong consistency, and high availability.

Primary database model

Secondary database models

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

Document store
Spatial DBMS

Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS
Time Series DBMS

Document store

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

Score	824.29
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	1.72
Rank	#145	Overall
	#67	Relational DBMS

Score	44.46
Rank	#23	Overall
	#1	Graph DBMS

Score	2.92
Rank	#101	Overall
	#18	Document stores

Score	4.66
Rank	#70	Overall
	#38	Relational DBMS

Website

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

Technical documentation

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

www.monetdb.org/Documentation

neo4j.com/docs

ravendb.net/docs

docs.pingcap.com/tidb/stable

Developer

Microsoft

MonetDB BV

Neo4j, Inc.

Hibernating Rhinos

PingCAP, Inc.

Initial release

1989

2004

2007

2010

2016

Current release

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

Dec2023 (11.49), December 2023

5.20, May 2024

5.4, July 2022

8.1.0, May 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

restricted free version is available

Open Source

Mozilla Public License 2.0

Open Source

GPL version3, commercial licenses available

Open Source

AGPL version 3, commercial license available

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

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.

TiDB Cloud: Fully-managed TiDB Service. Bring everything great about TiDB to the cloud.

Implementation language

C++

Java, Scala

Go, Rust

Server operating systems

Linux
Windows

FreeBSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Linux

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

Linux
macOS
Raspberry Pi
Windows

Linux

Data scheme

yes

schema-free and schema-optional

schema-free

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 2003 with some extensions

SQL-like query language (RQL)

yes

APIs and other access methods

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

JDBC
native C library

MAPI library (MonetDB application programming interface)
ODBC

Bolt protocol
Cypher query language
Java API
Neo4j-OGM

Object Graph Mapper
RESTful HTTP API
Spring Data Neo4j
TinkerPop 3

.NET Client API
F# Client API
Go Client API
Java Client API
NodeJS Client API
PHP Client API
Python Client API
RESTful HTTP API

GORM
JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary protocol
SQLAlchemy

Supported programming languages

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

C
C++
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Ruby

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

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

Ada
C
C#
C++
D
Delphi
Eiffel
Erlang
Haskell
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

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

yes, in SQL, C, R

yes

User defined Procedures and Functions

yes

Triggers

yes

via event handler

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

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

Sharding via remote tables

yes using Neo4j Fabric

Sharding

horizontal partitioning (by key range)

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

none

Source-replica replication available in experimental status

Causal Clustering using Raft protocol

available in in Enterprise Version only

Multi-source replication

Using Raft consensus algorithm to ensure data replication with strong consistency among multiple replicas.

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

with TiSpark Connector

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

Default ACID transactions on the local node (eventually consistent across the cluster). Atomic operations with cluster-wide ACID transactions. Eventual consistency for indexes and full-text search indexes.

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Relationships in graphs

yes

full support since version 6.6

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

ACID, Cluster-wide transaction available

ACID

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

User concepts

Access control

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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

Authorization levels configured per client per database

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...
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TiDB is an advanced open-source, distributed SQL database for modern application...
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Competitive advantages

Neo4j is the market leader, graph database category creator, and the most widely...
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- HORIZONTAL SCALING : TiDB grants total transparency into your data workloads without...
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Typical application scenarios

Real-Time Recommendations Master Data Management Identity and Access Management Network...
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TiDB is ideal for transactional applications that require extreme scalability and...
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Key customers

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

Block, Pinterest, Catalyst, Bolt, Flipkart, Capcom, Shopee (E-commerce), JD Cloud...
» more

Market metrics

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

34K+ GitHub stars 5K+ members in TiDB Community Slack 1K+ community contributors...
» more

Licensing and pricing models

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

TiDB Community : Free open source software (Apache 2.0) TiDB Self-Hosted : Enterprise...
» more

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