DBMS > Microsoft SQL Server vs. Neo4j vs. Oracle vs. SAP HANA vs. Vertica

System Properties Comparison Microsoft SQL Server vs. Neo4j vs. Oracle vs. SAP HANA vs. Vertica

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

Widely used RDBMS

In-memory, column based data store. Available as appliance or cloud service

Cloud or off-cloud analytical database and query engine for structured and semi-structured streaming and batch data. Machine learning platform with built-in algorithms, data preparation capabilities, and model evaluation and management via SQL or Python.

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Graph DBMS

Relational DBMS

Column oriented

Secondary database models

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS

with Oracle Spatial and Graph
RDF store

with Oracle Spatial and Graph
Spatial DBMS

with Oracle Spatial and Graph
Vector DBMS

since Oracle 23

Document store
Graph DBMS

with SAP Hana, Enterprise Edition
Spatial DBMS

Spatial DBMS
Time Series 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	1234.27
Rank	#1	Overall
	#1	Relational DBMS

Score	45.84
Rank	#22	Overall
	#16	Relational DBMS

Score	11.40
Rank	#43	Overall
	#27	Relational DBMS

Website

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

neo4j.com

www.oracle.com/database

www.sap.com/products/hana.html

www.vertica.com

Technical documentation

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

neo4j.com/docs

docs.oracle.com/en/database

help.sap.com/hana

vertica.com/documentation

Developer

Microsoft

Neo4j, Inc.

Oracle

SAP

OpenText

previously Micro Focus and Hewlett Packard

Initial release

1989

2007

1980

2010

2005

Current release

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

5.19, April 2024

23c, September 2023

2.0 SPS07 (April 4, 2023), April 2023

12.0.3, January 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

restricted free version is available

Open Source

GPL version3, commercial licenses available

commercial

restricted free version is available

commercial

Limited community edition free

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

also available as a cloud based service

on-premises, all major clouds - Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform and containers

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

C and C++

C++

Server operating systems

Linux
Windows

Linux

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

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows
z/OS

Appliance or cloud-service

Linux

Data scheme

yes

schema-free and schema-optional

yes

Schemaless in JSON and XML columns

yes

Yes, but also semi-structure/unstructured data storage, and complex hierarchical data (like Parquet) stored and/or queried.

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

No Indexes Required. Different internal optimization strategy, but same functionality included.

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

with proprietary extensions

yes

Full 1999 standard plus machine learning, time series and geospatial. Over 650 functions.

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
ODP.NET
Oracle Call Interface (OCI)

JDBC
ODBC

ADO.NET
JDBC
Kafka Connector
ODBC
RESTful HTTP API
Spark Connector
vSQL

character-based, interactive, front-end utility

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

C
C#
C++
Clojure
Cobol
Delphi
Eiffel
Erlang
Fortran
Groovy
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Lisp
Objective C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Scala
Tcl
Visual Basic

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

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

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

yes

User defined Procedures and Functions

PL/SQL

also stored procedures in Java possible

SQLScript, R

yes, PostgreSQL PL/pgSQL, with minor differences

Triggers

yes

via event handler

yes

yes, called Custom Alerts

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, horizontal partitioning

yes

horizontal partitioning, hierarchical partitioning

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

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

yes

Multi-source replication

One, or more copies of data replicated across nodes, or object-store used for repository.

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

can be realized in PL/SQL

Bi-directional Spark integration

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

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Relationships in graphs

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

isolation level can be parameterized

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

Version 12c introduced the new option 'Oracle Database In-Memory'

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

yes

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard; supports Kerberos, LDAP, Ident and hash

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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Deploy-anywhere database for large-scale analytical deployments. Deploy off-cloud,...
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Competitive advantages

Neo4j is the market leader, graph database category creator, and the most widely...
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Fast, scalable, and capable of high concurrency. Separation of compute/storage leverages...
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Typical application scenarios

Real-Time Recommendations Master Data Management Identity and Access Management Network...
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Communication and network analytics, Embedded analytics, Fraud monitoring and Risk...
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Key customers

Over 800 commercial customers and over 4300 startups use Neo4j. Flagship customers...
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Abiba Systems, Adform, adMarketplace, AmeriPride, Anritsu, AOL, Avito, Auckland Transport,...
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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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Cost-based models and subscription-based models are both available. One license is...
» more

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and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.