DBMS > Microsoft SQL Server vs. Neo4j vs. OpenSearch vs. Oracle NoSQL vs. Riak KV

System Properties Comparison Microsoft SQL Server vs. Neo4j vs. OpenSearch vs. Oracle NoSQL vs. Riak KV

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

A distributed, RESTful search and analytics engine forked from Elasticsearch and based on Apache Lucene

A multi-model, scalable, distributed NoSQL database, designed to provide highly reliable, flexible, and available data management across a configurable set of storage nodes

Distributed, fault tolerant key-value store

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Graph DBMS

Search engine

Document store
Key-value store
Relational DBMS

Key-value store

with links between data sets and object tags for the creation of secondary indexes

Secondary database models

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

Vector DBMS

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

Score	824.29
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	44.46
Rank	#23	Overall
	#1	Graph DBMS

Score	16.36
Rank	#37	Overall
	#4	Search engines

Score	2.95
Rank	#100	Overall
	#17	Document stores
	#17	Key-value stores
	#50	Relational DBMS

Score	4.10
Rank	#82	Overall
	#9	Key-value stores

Website

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

neo4j.com

github.com/opensearch-project
opensearch.org

www.oracle.com/database/nosql/technologies/nosql

Technical documentation

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

neo4j.com/docs

opensearch.org/docs/latest

docs.oracle.com/en/database/other-databases/nosql-database/index.html

www.tiot.jp/riak-docs/riak/kv/latest

Developer

Microsoft

Neo4j, Inc.

Amazon Web Services

Oracle

OpenSource, formerly Basho Technologies

Initial release

1989

2007

2021

2011

2009

Current release

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

5.19, April 2024

2.5.0, January 2023

23.3, December 2023

3.2.0, December 2022

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

restricted free version is available

Open Source

GPL version3, commercial licenses available

Open Source

Apache Version 2.0

Open Source

Proprietary for Enterprise Edition (Oracle Database EE license has Oracle NoSQL database EE covered: details)

Open Source

Apache version 2, commercial enterprise edition

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.

STACKIT OpenSearch offers OpenSearch in a managed version in enterprise grade, 100% GDPR-compliant, for a wide range of applications like analytics, website search, offering scalability and fast data access.
Aiven for OpenSearch: Fully managed open source search and analytics suite. Out-of-the-box integrations get you up and running in a couple of clicks.

Implementation language

C++

Java, Scala

Java

Erlang

Server operating systems

Linux
Windows

Linux

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

All OS with a Java VM

Linux
Solaris SPARC/x86

Linux
OS X

Data scheme

yes

schema-free and schema-optional

schema-free

Flexible type definitions. Once a type is defined, it is persistent

Support Fixed schema and Schema-less deployment with the ability to interoperate between them.

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

optional

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

All search fields are automatically indexed

yes

restricted

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

SQL-like query language

SQL-like DML and DDL statements

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

Java API
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

RESTful HTTP API

HTTP API
Native Erlang Interface

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

Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby

Elasticsearch client

C
C#
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

unofficial client library
C#
C++

unofficial client library
Clojure

unofficial client library
Dart

unofficial client library
Erlang
Go

unofficial client library
Groovy

unofficial client library
Haskell

unofficial client library
Java
JavaScript

unofficial client library
Lisp

unofficial client library
Perl

unofficial client library
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

unofficial client library
Smalltalk

unofficial client library

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

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

yes

User defined Procedures and Functions

yes

Erlang

Triggers

yes

via event handler

yes

by using the 'percolation' feature

yes

pre-commit hooks and post-commit hooks

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

no "single point of failure"

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

Electable source-replica replication per shard. Support distributed global deployment with Multi-region table feature

selectable replication factor

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

with Hadoop integration

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

Eventual Consistency

Synchronous doc based replication. Get by ID may show delays up to 1 sec. Configurable write consistency: one, quorum, all

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

depending on configuration

Eventual Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Relationships in graphs

links between data sets can be stored

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

configurable

ACID within a storage node (=shard)

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

off heap cache

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)

Access rights for users and roles

yes, using Riak Security

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

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

OpenSearch is a highly scalable and extensible open-source software suite for search,...
» more

Competitive advantages

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

Distributed as fully open source under Apache License, Version 2.0 (ALv2), OpenSearch...
» more

Typical application scenarios

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

The OpenSearch platform is used across a broad range of search , analytics, and observability...
» more

Key customers

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

The OpenSearch Project offers open source software licensed under Apache License...
» more

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