DBMS > Microsoft SQL Server vs. Neo4j vs. Newts vs. SAP SQL Anywhere vs. TerarkDB

System Properties Comparison Microsoft SQL Server vs. Neo4j vs. Newts vs. SAP SQL Anywhere vs. TerarkDB

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

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

Time Series DBMS based on Cassandra

RDBMS database and synchronization technologies for server, desktop, remote office, and mobile environments

A key-value store forked from RocksDB with advanced compression algorithms. It can be used standalone or as a storage engine for MySQL and MongoDB

Primary database model

Secondary database models

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	829.80
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	44.47
Rank	#23	Overall
	#1	Graph DBMS

Score	0.00
Rank	#396	Overall
	#42	Time Series DBMS

Score	4.57
Rank	#78	Overall
	#43	Relational DBMS

Score	0.04
Rank	#377	Overall
	#58	Key-value stores

Website

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

neo4j.com

opennms.github.io/newts

www.sap.com/products/technology-platform/sql-anywhere.html

github.com/bytedance/terarkdb

Technical documentation

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

neo4j.com/docs

github.com/OpenNMS/newts/wiki

help.sap.com/docs/SAP_SQL_Anywhere

bytedance.larkoffice.com/docs/doccnZmYFqHBm06BbvYgjsHHcKc

Developer

Microsoft

Neo4j, Inc.

OpenNMS Group

SAP

formerly Sybase

ByteDance, originally Terark

Initial release

1989

2007

2014

1992

2016

Current release

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

5.18.1, March 2024

17, July 2015

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

restricted free version is available

Open Source

GPL version3, commercial licenses available

Open Source

Apache 2.0

commercial

restricted open source version available

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.

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

Implementation language

C++

Java, Scala

Java

C++

Server operating systems

Linux
Windows

Linux

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

Linux
OS X
Windows

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Data scheme

yes

schema-free and schema-optional

schema-free

yes

schema-free

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

APIs and other access methods

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
Java API

ADO.NET
HTTP API
JDBC
ODBC

C++ API
Java API

Supported programming languages

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

Java

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

C++
Java

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

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

yes

User defined Procedures and Functions

yes, in C/C++, Java, .Net or Perl

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

yes using Neo4j Fabric

Sharding

based on Cassandra

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

Causal Clustering using Raft protocol

available in in Enterprise Version only

selectable replication factor

based on Cassandra

Source-replica replication

Database mirroring

none

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

Eventual Consistency

based on Cassandra
Immediate Consistency

based on Cassandra

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Relationships in graphs

yes

Transaction concepts

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

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)

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

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Competitive advantages

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Typical application scenarios

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Key customers

Over 800 commercial customers and over 4300 startups use Neo4j. Flagship customers...
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Market metrics

Neo4j boasts the world's largest graph database ecosystem with more than 140 million...
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Licensing and pricing models

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

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