DBMS > Microsoft SQL Server vs. Neo4j vs. NuoDB vs. TempoIQ vs. Titan

System Properties Comparison Microsoft SQL Server vs. Neo4j vs. NuoDB vs. TempoIQ vs. Titan

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

TempoIQ seems to be decommissioned. It will be removed from the DB-Engines ranking.

Titan has been decommisioned after the takeover by Datastax. It will be removed from the DB-Engines ranking. A fork has been open-sourced as JanusGraph.

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

NuoDB is a webscale distributed database that supports SQL and ACID transactions

Scalable analytics DBMS for sensor data, provided as a service (SaaS)

Titan is a Graph DBMS optimized for distributed clusters.

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	821.56
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	44.89
Rank	#21	Overall
	#1	Graph DBMS

Score	0.94
Rank	#197	Overall
	#92	Relational DBMS

Website

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

neo4j.com

www.3ds.com/nuodb-distributed-sql-database

tempoiq.com (offline)

github.com/thinkaurelius/titan

Technical documentation

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

neo4j.com/docs

doc.nuodb.com

github.com/thinkaurelius/titan/wiki

Developer

Microsoft

Neo4j, Inc.

Dassault Systèmes

originally NuoDB, Inc.

TempoIQ

Aurelius, owned by DataStax

Initial release

1989

2007

2013

2012

Current release

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

5.20, May 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

restricted free version is available

Open Source

GPL version3, commercial licenses available

commercial

limited edition free

commercial

Open Source

Apache license, version 2.0

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

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

Implementation language

C++

Java, Scala

C++

Java

Server operating systems

Linux
Windows

Linux

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

hosted

Amazon EC2, Windows Azure, SoftLayer
Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
OS X
Unix
Windows

Data scheme

yes

schema-free and schema-optional

yes

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

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

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC

HTTP API

Java API
TinkerPop Blueprints
TinkerPop Frames
TinkerPop Gremlin
TinkerPop Rexster

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

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

C#
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Python
Ruby

Clojure
Java
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

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

yes

User defined Procedures and Functions

Java, SQL

yes

Triggers

yes

via event handler

yes

Realtime Alerts

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

data is dynamically stored/cached on the nodes where it is read/written

yes

via pluggable storage backends

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

yes

Managed transparently by NuoDB

yes

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

via Faunus, a graph analytics engine

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

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Relationships in graphs

yes

Relationships in graph

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

tunable commit protocol

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

MVCC

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

Supports various storage backends: Cassandra, HBase, Berkeley DB, Akiban, Hazelcast

In-memory capabilities

Is there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.

yes

Temporary table

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)

Standard SQL roles/ privileges, Administrative Users

simple authentication-based access control

User authentification and security via Rexster Graph Server

More information provided by the system vendor

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Key customers

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Market metrics

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Licensing and pricing models

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