DBMS > Microsoft SQL Server vs. Neo4j vs. OpenEdge vs. OpenQM vs. RavenDB

System Properties Comparison Microsoft SQL Server vs. Neo4j vs. OpenEdge vs. OpenQM vs. RavenDB

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

Application development environment with integrated database management system

QpenQM is a high-performance, self-tuning, multi-value DBMS

Open Source Operational and Transactional Enterprise NoSQL Document Database

Primary database model

Secondary database models

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS
Time Series 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	3.45
Rank	#85	Overall
	#46	Relational DBMS

Score	0.34
Rank	#284	Overall
	#10	Multivalue DBMS

Score	2.84
Rank	#101	Overall
	#18	Document stores

Website

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

neo4j.com

www.progress.com/openedge

www.rocketsoftware.com/products/rocket-multivalue-application-development-platform/rocket-open-qm

ravendb.net

Technical documentation

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

neo4j.com/docs

documentation.progress.com/output/ua/OpenEdge_latest

ravendb.net/docs

Developer

Microsoft

Neo4j, Inc.

Progress Software Corporation

Rocket Software, originally Martin Phillips

Hibernating Rhinos

Initial release

1989

2007

1984

1993

2010

Current release

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

5.20, May 2024

OpenEdge 12.2, March 2020

3.4-12

5.4, July 2022

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

restricted free version is available

Open Source

GPL version3, commercial licenses available

commercial

Open Source

GPLv2, extended commercial license available

Open Source

AGPL version 3, commercial license 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.

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

Server operating systems

Linux
Windows

Linux

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

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
Solaris
Windows

AIX
FreeBSD
Linux
macOS
Raspberry Pi
Solaris
Windows

Linux
macOS
Raspberry Pi
Windows

Data scheme

yes

schema-free and schema-optional

yes

with some exceptions

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

close to SQL 92

SQL-like query language (RQL)

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

JDBC
ODBC

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

Progress proprietary ABL (Advanced Business Language)

.Net
Basic
C
Java
Objective C
PHP
Python

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

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

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

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

yes using Neo4j Fabric

horizontal partitioning

since Version 11.4

yes

Sharding

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

Source-replica replication

yes

Multi-source replication

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

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

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.

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Relationships in graphs

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

ACID, Cluster-wide transaction available

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)

Users and groups

Access rights can be defined down to the item level

Authorization levels configured per client per database

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...
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