DBMS > Microsoft SQL Server vs. Neo4j vs. Solr vs. Vertica

System Properties Comparison Microsoft SQL Server vs. Neo4j vs. Solr vs. Vertica

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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 widely used distributed, scalable search engine based on Apache Lucene

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

Column oriented

Secondary database models

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

Spatial DBMS

Spatial 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	42.91
Rank	#24	Overall
	#3	Search engines

Score	10.68
Rank	#43	Overall
	#27	Relational DBMS

Website

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

neo4j.com

solr.apache.org

www.vertica.com

Technical documentation

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

neo4j.com/docs

solr.apache.org/resources.html

vertica.com/documentation

Developer

Microsoft

Neo4j, Inc.

Apache Software Foundation

OpenText

previously Micro Focus and Hewlett Packard

Initial release

1989

2007

2006

2005

Current release

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

5.19, April 2024

9.6.0, April 2024

12.0.3, January 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

restricted free version is available

Open Source

GPL version3, commercial licenses available

Open Source

Apache Version 2

commercial

Limited community edition free

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud 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

Java

C++

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

runs as a servlet in servlet container (e.g. Tomcat, Jetty is included)

Linux

Data scheme

yes

schema-free and schema-optional

yes

Dynamic Fields enables on-the-fly addition of new fields

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

supports customizable data types and automatic typing

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

All search fields are automatically indexed

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

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

Solr Parallel SQL Interface

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

Java API
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

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

.Net
Erlang
Java
JavaScript
any language that supports sockets and either XML or JSON
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

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

Java plugins

yes, PostgreSQL PL/pgSQL, with minor differences

Triggers

yes

via event handler

yes

User configurable commands triggered on index changes

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, 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

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

spark-solr: github.com/lucidworks/spark-solr and streaming expressions to reduce

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

Eventual Consistency

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

optimistic locking

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

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)

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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