DBMS > Microsoft SQL Server vs. Neo4j vs. PostgreSQL vs. SAP HANA vs. TiDB
System Properties Comparison Microsoft SQL Server vs. Neo4j vs. PostgreSQL vs. SAP HANA vs. TiDB
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| Name | Microsoft SQL Server Xexclude from comparison | Neo4j Xexclude from comparison | PostgreSQL Xexclude from comparison | SAP HANA Xexclude from comparison | TiDB Xexclude from comparison | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 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 open source RDBMS  Developed as objectoriented DBMS (Postgres), gradually enhanced with 'standards' like SQL | In-memory, column based data store. Available as appliance or cloud service | TiDB is an open source distributed SQL database that supports Hybrid Transactional/Analytical Processing (HTAP) workloads. It is MySQL compatible and features horizontal scalability, strong consistency, and high availability. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Primary database model | Relational DBMS | Graph DBMS | Relational DBMS with object oriented extensions, e.g.: user defined types/functions and inheritance. Handling of key/value pairs with hstore module. | Relational DBMS | Relational DBMS | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Secondary database models | Document store Graph DBMS Spatial DBMS | Document store Graph DBMS with Apache AgeSpatial DBMS Vector DBMS with pgvector extension | Document store Graph DBMS with SAP Hana, Enterprise EditionSpatial DBMS | Document store | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Website | www.microsoft.com/en-us/sql-server | neo4j.com | www.postgresql.org | www.sap.com/products/hana.html | pingcap.com | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Technical documentation | learn.microsoft.com/en-US/sql/sql-server | neo4j.com/docs | www.postgresql.org/docs | help.sap.com/hana | docs.pingcap.com/tidb/stable | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Developer | Microsoft | Neo4j, Inc. | PostgreSQL Global Development Group www.postgresql.org/developer | SAP | PingCAP, Inc. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Initial release | 1989 | 2007 | 1989 1989: Postgres, 1996: PostgreSQL | 2010 | 2016 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Current release | SQL Server 2022, November 2022 | 5.19, April 2024 | 16.2, February 2024 | 2.0 SPS07 (April 4, 2023), April 2023 | 7.6.0, January 2024 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| License Commercial or Open Source | commercial restricted free version is available | Open Source GPL version3, commercial licenses available | Open Source BSD | commercial | Open Source Apache 2.0 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Cloud-based only Only available as a cloud service | no | no | no | no also available as a cloud based service | no | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 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. | Aiven for PostgreSQL: Fully managed PostgreSQL for developers with 70+ extensions and flexible orchestration tools. | TiDB Cloud: Fully-managed TiDB Service. Bring everything great about TiDB to the cloud. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Implementation language | C++ | Java, Scala | C | Go, Rust | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Server operating systems | Linux Windows | Linux Can also be used server-less as embedded Java database. OS X Solaris Windows | FreeBSD HP-UX Linux NetBSD OpenBSD OS X Solaris Unix Windows | Appliance or cloud-service | Linux | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Data scheme | yes | schema-free and schema-optional | yes | yes | yes | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Typing predefined data types such as float or date | yes | yes | yes | yes | 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 | yes specific XML-type available, but no XML query functionality. | no | no | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Secondary indexes | yes | yes pluggable indexing subsystem, by default Apache Lucene | yes | yes | yes | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| SQL Support of SQL | yes | no | yes standard with numerous extensions | yes | 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 MapperRESTful HTTP API Spring Data Neo4j TinkerPop 3 | ADO.NET JDBC native C library ODBC streaming API for large objects | JDBC ODBC | GORM JDBC ODBC Proprietary protocol SQLAlchemy | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 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++ Delphi Java JDBCJavaScript (Node.js) Perl PHP Python Tcl | Ada C C# C++ D Delphi Eiffel Erlang Haskell Java JavaScript (Node.js) Objective-C OCaml Perl PHP Python Ruby Scheme Tcl | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Server-side scripts Stored procedures | Transact SQL, .NET languages, R, Python and (with SQL Server 2019) Java | yes User defined Procedures and Functions | user defined functions realized in proprietary language PL/pgSQL or with common languages like Perl, Python, Tcl etc. | SQLScript, R | no | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Triggers | yes | yes via event handler | yes | yes | no | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 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 | partitioning by range, list and (since PostgreSQL 11) by hash | yes | horizontal partitioning (by key range) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 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 other methods possible by using 3rd party extensions | yes | Using Raft consensus algorithm to ensure data replication with strong consistency among multiple replicas. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| MapReduce Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods | no | no | no | no | yes with TiSpark Connector | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 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 | Immediate Consistency | Immediate Consistency | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Foreign keys Referential integrity | yes | yes Relationships in graphs | yes | yes | yes full support since version 6.6 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Transaction concepts Support to ensure data integrity after non-atomic manipulations of data | ACID | ACID | ACID | ACID | ACID | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Concurrency Support for concurrent manipulation of data | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Durability Support for making data persistent | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| In-memory capabilities Is there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only. | yes | no | yes | no | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 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 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| More information provided by the system vendor | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Microsoft SQL Server | Neo4j | PostgreSQL | SAP HANA | TiDB | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Specific characteristics | Neo4j delivers graph technology that has been battle tested for performance and scale... » more | TiDB is an advanced open-source, distributed SQL database for modern application... » more | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Competitive advantages | Neo4j is the market leader, graph database category creator, and the most widely... » more | - HORIZONTAL SCALING : TiDB grants total transparency into your data workloads without... » more | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Typical application scenarios | Real-Time Recommendations Master Data Management Identity and Access Management Network... » more | TiDB is ideal for transactional applications that require extreme scalability and... » more | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Key customers | Over 800 commercial customers and over 4300 startups use Neo4j. Flagship customers... » more | Block, Pinterest, Catalyst, Bolt, Flipkart, Capcom, Shopee (E-commerce), JD Cloud... » more | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Market metrics | Neo4j boasts the world's largest graph database ecosystem with more than 140 million... » more | 34K+ GitHub stars 5K+ members in TiDB Community Slack 1K+ community contributors... » more | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Licensing and pricing models | GPL v3 license that can be used all the places where you might use MySQL. Neo4j Commercial... » more | TiDB Community : Free open source software (Apache 2.0) TiDB Self-Hosted : Enterprise... » more | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| News | What Is Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)? This Week in Neo4j: Google Cloud, Analysis, Knowledge Graph, Relationships and more Announcing NODES 2024: Submit Your Talk ISO GQL: A Defining Moment in the History of Database Innovation This Week in Neo4j: Podcast, RAG, Neo4j Guide, ERP and more | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Microsoft SQL Server | Neo4j | PostgreSQL | SAP HANA | TiDB | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| DB-Engines blog posts | MySQL is the DBMS of the Year 2019 The struggle for the hegemony in Oracle's database empire Microsoft SQL Server is the DBMS of the Year | Applying Graph Analytics to Game of Thrones MySQL, PostgreSQL and Redis are the winners of the March ranking The openCypher Project: Help Shape the SQL for Graphs | PostgreSQL is the DBMS of the Year 2023 Snowflake is the DBMS of the Year 2022, defending the title from last year Snowflake is the DBMS of the Year 2021 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Conferences, events and webinars | Monitoring PostgreSQL with Redgate Monitor | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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