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DBMS > Neo4j vs. PlanetScale vs. Sphinx vs. TimescaleDB

System Properties Comparison Neo4j vs. PlanetScale vs. Sphinx vs. TimescaleDB

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines
NameNeo4j  Xexclude from comparisonPlanetScale  Xexclude from comparisonSphinx  Xexclude from comparisonTimescaleDB  Xexclude from comparison
DescriptionScalable, ACID-compliant graph database designed with a high-performance distributed cluster architecture, available in self-hosted and cloud offeringsScalable, distributed, serverless MySQL database platform built on top of VitessOpen source search engine for searching in data from different sources, e.g. relational databasesA time series DBMS optimized for fast ingest and complex queries, based on PostgreSQL
Primary database modelGraph DBMSRelational DBMSSearch engineTime Series DBMS
Secondary database modelsDocument store
Spatial DBMS
Relational DBMS
DB-Engines Ranking infomeasures the popularity of database management systemsranking trend
Trend Chart
Score42.68
Rank#21  Overall
#1  Graph DBMS
Score1.09
Rank#178  Overall
#82  Relational DBMS
Score5.97
Rank#56  Overall
#5  Search engines
Score4.06
Rank#73  Overall
#5  Time Series DBMS
Websiteneo4j.complanetscale.comsphinxsearch.comwww.timescale.com
Technical documentationneo4j.com/­docsplanetscale.com/­docssphinxsearch.com/­docsdocs.timescale.com
DeveloperNeo4j, Inc.PlanetScaleSphinx Technologies Inc.Timescale
Initial release2007202020012017
Current release5.23, August 20243.5.1, February 20232.15.0, May 2024
License infoCommercial or Open SourceOpen Source infoGPL version3, commercial licenses availablecommercialOpen Source infoGPL version 2, commercial licence availableOpen Source infoApache 2.0
Cloud-based only infoOnly available as a cloud servicenoyesnono
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 languageJava, ScalaGoC++C
Server operating systemsLinux infoCan also be used server-less as embedded Java database.
OS X
Solaris
Windows
Docker
Linux
macOS
FreeBSD
Linux
NetBSD
OS X
Solaris
Windows
Linux
OS X
Windows
Data schemeschema-free and schema-optionalyesyesyes
Typing infopredefined data types such as float or dateyesyesnonumerics, strings, booleans, arrays, JSON blobs, geospatial dimensions, currencies, binary data, other complex data types
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.yes
Secondary indexesyes infopluggable indexing subsystem, by default Apache Luceneyesyes infofull-text index on all search fieldsyes
SQL infoSupport of SQLnoyes infowith proprietary extensionsSQL-like query language (SphinxQL)yes infofull PostgreSQL SQL syntax
APIs and other access methodsBolt protocol
Cypher query language
Java API
Neo4j-OGM infoObject Graph Mapper
RESTful HTTP API
Spring Data Neo4j
TinkerPop 3
ADO.NET
JDBC
MySQL protocol
ODBC
Proprietary protocolADO.NET
JDBC
native C library
ODBC
streaming API for large objects
Supported programming languages.Net
Clojure
Elixir
Go
Groovy
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala
Ada
C
C#
C++
D
Delphi
Eiffel
Erlang
Haskell
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl
C++ infounofficial client library
Java
Perl infounofficial client library
PHP
Python
Ruby infounofficial client library
.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java infoJDBC
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl
Server-side scripts infoStored proceduresyes infoUser defined Procedures and Functionsyes infoproprietary syntaxnouser defined functions, PL/pgSQL, PL/Tcl, PL/Perl, PL/Python, PL/Java, PL/PHP, PL/R, PL/Ruby, PL/Scheme, PL/Unix shell
Triggersyes infovia event handleryesnoyes
Partitioning methods infoMethods for storing different data on different nodesyes using Neo4j FabricShardingSharding infoPartitioning is done manually, search queries against distributed index is supportedyes, across time and space (hash partitioning) attributes
Replication methods infoMethods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodesCausal Clustering using Raft protocol infoavailable in in Enterprise Version onlyMulti-source replication
Source-replica replication
noneSource-replica replication with hot standby and reads on replicas info
MapReduce infoOffers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methodsnononono
Consistency concepts infoMethods to ensure consistency in a distributed systemCausal and Eventual Consistency configurable in Causal Cluster setup
Immediate Consistency in stand-alone mode
Eventual Consistency across shards
Immediate Consistency within a shard
Immediate Consistency
Foreign keys infoReferential integrityyes infoRelationships in graphsyes infonot for MyISAM storage enginenoyes
Transaction concepts infoSupport to ensure data integrity after non-atomic manipulations of dataACIDACID at shard levelnoACID
Concurrency infoSupport for concurrent manipulation of datayesyes infotable locks or row locks depending on storage engineyesyes
Durability infoSupport for making data persistentyesyesyes infoThe original contents of fields are not stored in the Sphinx index.yes
In-memory capabilities infoIs there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.yesno
User concepts infoAccess controlUsers, roles and permissions. Pluggable authentication with supported standards (LDAP, Active Directory, Kerberos)Users with fine-grained authorization concept infono user groups or rolesnofine grained access rights according to SQL-standard
More information provided by the system vendor
Neo4jPlanetScaleSphinxTimescaleDB
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
News

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18 September 2024

This Week in Neo4j: Knowledge Graph, Data Loading, Olympics, CSV and more
7 September 2024

Neo4j Expands Cloud Database Capabilities to Power Enterprise-Scale Graph Deployments
4 September 2024

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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
Neo4jPlanetScaleSphinxTimescaleDB
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