DBMS > Microsoft SQL Server vs. Neo4j vs. RavenDB vs. SWC-DB vs. Weaviate

System Properties Comparison Microsoft SQL Server vs. Neo4j vs. RavenDB vs. SWC-DB vs. Weaviate

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

Open Source Operational and Transactional Enterprise NoSQL Document Database

A high performance, scalable Wide Column DBMS

An AI-native realtime vector database engine that integrates scalable machine learning models.

Primary database model

Secondary database models

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS
Time Series DBMS

Time Series 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	2.92
Rank	#101	Overall
	#18	Document stores

Score	0.01
Rank	#376	Overall
	#13	Wide column stores

Score	1.73
Rank	#143	Overall
	#5	Vector DBMS

Website

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

neo4j.com

ravendb.net

github.com/kashirin-alex/swc-db
www.swcdb.org

github.com/weaviate/weaviate
weaviate.io

Technical documentation

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

neo4j.com/docs

ravendb.net/docs

weaviate.io/developers/weaviate

Developer

Microsoft

Neo4j, Inc.

Hibernating Rhinos

Alex Kashirin

Weaviate B.V.

Initial release

1989

2007

2010

2020

2019

Current release

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

5.19, April 2024

5.4, July 2022

0.5, April 2021

1.19, May 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

restricted free version is available

Open Source

GPL version3, commercial licenses available

Open Source

AGPL version 3, commercial license available

Open Source

GPL V3

Open Source

commercial license available with Weaviate Enterprise

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.

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

Implementation language

C++

Java, Scala

C++

Server operating systems

Linux
Windows

Linux

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

Linux
macOS
Raspberry Pi
Windows

Linux

Data scheme

yes

schema-free and schema-optional

schema-free

yes, maps to GraphQL interface

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

string, int, float, geo point, date, cross reference, fuzzy references

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 data objects are indexed in a semantic vector space (the Contextionary), all primitive fields are indexed

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

SQL-like query language (RQL)

SQL-like query language

GraphQL is used as query language

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

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

Proprietary protocol
Thrift

GraphQL query language
RESTful HTTP/JSON 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

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

C++

JavaScript / TypeScript
Python

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

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

Multi-source replication

yes

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

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.

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Relationships in graphs

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)

Authorization levels configured per client per database

API Keys
OpenID Connect Discovery

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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Weaviate is an open source vector database that is robust, scalable, cloud-native,...
» more

Competitive advantages

Neo4j is the market leader, graph database category creator, and the most widely...
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Flexible deployment - Free, open source or fully-managed cloud vector database service...
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Typical application scenarios

Real-Time Recommendations Master Data Management Identity and Access Management Network...
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As a database supporting the development of generative AI and semantic search applications...
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Key customers

Over 800 commercial customers and over 4300 startups use Neo4j. Flagship customers...
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All companies that have data.
» more

Market metrics

Neo4j boasts the world's largest graph database ecosystem with more than 140 million...
» more

As of mid 2023: Over 2 million open source downloads 3500+ Weaviate Slack community...
» more

Licensing and pricing models

GPL v3 license that can be used all the places where you might use MySQL. Neo4j Commercial...
» more

Weaviate is open-source, and free to use. Weaviate is also available as a fully managed...
» more

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