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DBMS > Microsoft SQL Server vs. Neo4j vs. RethinkDB

System Properties Comparison Microsoft SQL Server vs. Neo4j vs. RethinkDB

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines
NameMicrosoft SQL Server  Xexclude from comparisonNeo4j  Xexclude from comparisonRethinkDB  Xexclude from comparison
DescriptionMicrosofts flagship relational DBMSScalable, ACID-compliant graph database designed with a high-performance distributed cluster architecture, available in self-hosted and cloud offeringsDBMS for the Web with a mechanism to push updated query results to applications in realtime.
Primary database modelRelational DBMSGraph DBMSDocument store
Secondary database modelsDocument store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS
Spatial DBMS
DB-Engines Ranking infomeasures the popularity of database management systemsranking trend
Trend Chart
Score829.80
Rank#3  Overall
#3  Relational DBMS
Score44.47
Rank#23  Overall
#1  Graph DBMS
Score2.84
Rank#106  Overall
#19  Document stores
Websitewww.microsoft.com/­en-us/­sql-serverneo4j.comrethinkdb.com
Technical documentationlearn.microsoft.com/­en-US/­sql/­sql-serverneo4j.com/­docsrethinkdb.com/­docs
DeveloperMicrosoftNeo4j, Inc.The Linux Foundation infosince July 2017
Initial release198920072009
Current releaseSQL Server 2022, November 20225.19, April 20242.4.1, August 2020
License infoCommercial or Open Sourcecommercial inforestricted free version is availableOpen Source infoGPL version3, commercial licenses availableOpen Source infoApache Version 2
Cloud-based only infoOnly available as a cloud servicenonono
DBaaS offerings (sponsored links) infoDatabase 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 languageC++Java, ScalaC++
Server operating systemsLinux
Windows
Linux infoCan also be used server-less as embedded Java database.
OS X
Solaris
Windows
Linux
OS X
Windows
Data schemeyesschema-free and schema-optionalschema-free
Typing infopredefined data types such as float or dateyesyesyes infostring, binary, float, bool, date, geometry
XML support infoSome form of processing data in XML format, e.g. support for XML data structures, and/or support for XPath, XQuery or XSLT.yesno
Secondary indexesyesyes infopluggable indexing subsystem, by default Apache Luceneyes
SQL infoSupport of SQLyesnono
APIs and other access methodsADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
OLE DB
Tabular Data Stream (TDS)
Bolt protocol
Cypher query language
Java API
Neo4j-OGM infoObject Graph Mapper
RESTful HTTP API
Spring Data Neo4j
TinkerPop 3
Supported programming languagesC#
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 infocommunity-supported driver
C# infocommunity-supported driver
C++ infocommunity-supported driver
Clojure infocommunity-supported driver
Dart infocommunity-supported driver
Erlang infocommunity-supported driver
Go infocommunity-supported driver
Haskell infocommunity-supported driver
Java infoofficial driver
JavaScript (Node.js) infoofficial driver
Lisp infocommunity-supported driver
Lua infocommunity-supported driver
Objective-C infocommunity-supported driver
Perl infocommunity-supported driver
PHP infocommunity-supported driver
Python infoofficial driver
Ruby infoofficial driver
Scala infocommunity-supported driver
Server-side scripts infoStored proceduresTransact SQL, .NET languages, R, Python and (with SQL Server 2019) Javayes infoUser defined Procedures and Functions
Triggersyesyes infovia event handlerClient-side triggers through changefeeds
Partitioning methods infoMethods for storing different data on different nodestables can be distributed across several files (horizontal partitioning); sharding through federationyes using Neo4j FabricSharding inforange based
Replication methods infoMethods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodesyes, but depending on the SQL-Server EditionCausal Clustering using Raft protocol infoavailable in in Enterprise Version onlySource-replica replication
MapReduce infoOffers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methodsnonoyes
Consistency concepts infoMethods to ensure consistency in a distributed systemImmediate ConsistencyCausal and Eventual Consistency configurable in Causal Cluster setup
Immediate Consistency in stand-alone mode
Immediate Consistency
Foreign keys infoReferential integrityyesyes infoRelationships in graphsno
Transaction concepts infoSupport to ensure data integrity after non-atomic manipulations of dataACIDACIDAtomic single-document operations
Concurrency infoSupport for concurrent manipulation of datayesyesyes infoMVCC based
Durability infoSupport for making data persistentyesyesyes
In-memory capabilities infoIs there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.yesno
User concepts infoAccess controlfine grained access rights according to SQL-standardUsers, roles and permissions. Pluggable authentication with supported standards (LDAP, Active Directory, Kerberos)yes infousers and table-level permissions
More information provided by the system vendor
Microsoft SQL ServerNeo4jRethinkDB
Specific characteristicsNeo4j delivers graph technology that has been battle tested for performance and scale...
» more
Competitive advantagesNeo4j is the market leader, graph database category creator, and the most widely...
» more
Typical application scenariosReal-Time Recommendations Master Data Management Identity and Access Management Network...
» more
Key customersOver 800 commercial customers and over 4300 startups use Neo4j. Flagship customers...
» more
Market metricsNeo4j boasts the world's largest graph database ecosystem with more than 140 million...
» more
Licensing and pricing modelsGPL v3 license that can be used all the places where you might use MySQL. Neo4j Commercial...
» more
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and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.

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More resources
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