DBMS > MySQL vs. Neo4j vs. NuoDB vs. Oracle vs. Riak KV

System Properties Comparison MySQL vs. Neo4j vs. NuoDB vs. Oracle vs. Riak KV

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Widely used open source RDBMS

Scalable, ACID-compliant graph database designed with a high-performance distributed cluster architecture, available in self-hosted and cloud offerings

NuoDB is a webscale distributed database that supports SQL and ACID transactions

Widely used RDBMS

Distributed, fault tolerant key-value store

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Key/Value like access via memcached API

Graph DBMS

Relational DBMS

Key-value store

with links between data sets and object tags for the creation of secondary indexes

Secondary database models

Document store
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

DB-Engines Ranking measures the popularity of database management systems
Trend Chart

Score	1083.74
Rank	#2	Overall
	#2	Relational DBMS

Score	44.46
Rank	#23	Overall
	#1	Graph DBMS

Score	0.89
Rank	#198	Overall
	#92	Relational DBMS

Score	1236.29
Rank	#1	Overall
	#1	Relational DBMS

Score	4.10
Rank	#82	Overall
	#9	Key-value stores

Website

www.mysql.com

neo4j.com

www.3ds.com/nuodb-distributed-sql-database

www.oracle.com/database

Technical documentation

dev.mysql.com/doc

neo4j.com/docs

doc.nuodb.com

docs.oracle.com/en/database

www.tiot.jp/riak-docs/riak/kv/latest

Developer

Oracle

since 2010, originally MySQL AB, then Sun

Neo4j, Inc.

Dassault Systèmes

originally NuoDB, Inc.

Oracle

OpenSource, formerly Basho Technologies

Initial release

1995

2007

2013

1980

2009

Current release

8.4.0, April 2024

5.19, April 2024

23c, September 2023

3.2.0, December 2022

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

GPL version 2. Commercial licenses with extended functionallity are available

Open Source

GPL version3, commercial licenses available

commercial

limited edition free

commercial

restricted free version is available

Open Source

Apache version 2, commercial enterprise edition

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.

Aiven for MySQL: Fully managed MySQL, deployable in the cloud of your choice, with seamless integrations and lightning-fast setup.

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

Implementation language

C and C++

Java, Scala

C++

C and C++

Erlang

Server operating systems

FreeBSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Linux

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

hosted

Amazon EC2, Windows Azure, SoftLayer
Linux
OS X
Windows

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

Linux
OS X

Data scheme

yes

schema-free and schema-optional

yes

Schemaless in JSON and XML columns

schema-free

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

restricted

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

with proprietary extensions

yes

with proprietary extensions

APIs and other access methods

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary native API

Bolt protocol
Cypher query language
Java API
Neo4j-OGM

Object Graph Mapper
RESTful HTTP API
Spring Data Neo4j
TinkerPop 3

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC

JDBC
ODBC
ODP.NET
Oracle Call Interface (OCI)

HTTP API
Native Erlang Interface

Supported programming languages

Ada
C
C#
C++
D
Delphi
Eiffel
Erlang
Haskell
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl

.Net
Clojure
Elixir
Go
Groovy
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

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

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

unofficial client library
C#
C++

unofficial client library
Clojure

unofficial client library
Dart

unofficial client library
Erlang
Go

unofficial client library
Groovy

unofficial client library
Haskell

unofficial client library
Java
JavaScript

unofficial client library
Lisp

unofficial client library
Perl

unofficial client library
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

unofficial client library
Smalltalk

unofficial client library

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

proprietary syntax

yes

User defined Procedures and Functions

Java, SQL

PL/SQL

also stored procedures in Java possible

Erlang

Triggers

yes

via event handler

yes

pre-commit hooks and post-commit hooks

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

horizontal partitioning, sharding with MySQL Cluster or MySQL Fabric

yes using Neo4j Fabric

data is dynamically stored/cached on the nodes where it is read/written

Sharding, horizontal partitioning

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

Causal Clustering using Raft protocol

available in in Enterprise Version only

yes

Managed transparently by NuoDB

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

selectable replication factor

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

can be realized in PL/SQL

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

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

not for MyISAM storage engine

yes

Relationships in graphs

yes

links between data sets can be stored

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

not for MyISAM storage engine

ACID

tunable commit protocol

ACID

isolation level can be parameterized

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

table locks or row locks depending on storage engine

yes

MVCC

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

Temporary table

yes

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

User concepts

Access control

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

no user groups or roles

Users, roles and permissions. Pluggable authentication with supported standards (LDAP, Active Directory, Kerberos)

Standard SQL roles/ privileges, Administrative Users

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

yes, using Riak Security

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Neo4j delivers graph technology that has been battle tested for performance and scale...
» more

Competitive advantages

Neo4j is the market leader, graph database category creator, and the most widely...
» more

Typical application scenarios

Real-Time Recommendations Master Data Management Identity and Access Management Network...
» more

Key customers

Over 800 commercial customers and over 4300 startups use Neo4j. Flagship customers...
» more

Market metrics

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

Licensing and pricing models

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

News

This Week in Neo4j: GraphRAG, Knowledge Graphs, Open Source AI, GraphQL and more
4 May 2024

This Week in Neo4j: Nodes 2024, Data Modelling, Events, Knowledge Graphs and more
27 April 2024

GQL is Here: Your Cypher Queries in a GQL World
26 April 2024

GQL: The ISO Standard for Graphs Has Arrived
25 April 2024

What Is Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)?
24 April 2024

We invite representatives of system vendors to contact us for updating and extending the system information,
and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.