DBMS > Neo4j vs. PostGIS vs. VoltDB vs. XTDB

System Properties Comparison Neo4j vs. PostGIS vs. VoltDB vs. XTDB

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

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

Spatial extension of PostgreSQL

Distributed In-Memory NewSQL RDBMS

Used for OLTP applications with a high frequency of relatively simple transactions, that can hold all their data in memory

A general purpose database with bitemporal SQL and Datalog and graph queries

Primary database model

Secondary database models

Relational DBMS

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

Score	42.68
Rank	#21	Overall
	#1	Graph DBMS

Score	20.16
Rank	#29	Overall
	#1	Spatial DBMS

Score	1.38
Rank	#156	Overall
	#72	Relational DBMS

Score	0.13
Rank	#330	Overall
	#45	Document stores

Website

neo4j.com

postgis.net

www.voltdb.com

github.com/xtdb/xtdb
www.xtdb.com

Technical documentation

neo4j.com/docs

postgis.net/documentation

docs.voltdb.com

www.xtdb.com/docs

Developer

Neo4j, Inc.

VoltDB Inc.

Juxt Ltd.

Initial release

2007

2005

2010

2019

Current release

5.23, August 2024

3.4.2, February 2024

11.3, April 2022

1.19, September 2021

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

GPL version3, commercial licenses available

Open Source

GPL v2.0

Open Source

AGPL for Community Edition, commercial license for Enterprise, AWS, and Pro Editions

Open Source

MIT License

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

Java, Scala

Java, C++

Clojure

Server operating systems

Linux

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

Linux
OS X

for development

All OS with a Java 8 (and higher) VM
Linux

Data scheme

schema-free and schema-optional

yes

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

yes, extensible-data-notation format

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

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

only a subset of SQL 99

limited SQL, making use of Apache Calcite

APIs and other access methods

Bolt protocol
Cypher query language
Java API
Neo4j-OGM

Object Graph Mapper
RESTful HTTP API
Spring Data Neo4j
TinkerPop 3

Java API
JDBC
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

HTTP REST
JDBC

Supported programming languages

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

C#
C++
Erlang

not officially supported
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
PHP
Python

Clojure
Java

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

User defined Procedures and Functions

user defined functions

Java

Triggers

yes

via event handler

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

yes using Neo4j Fabric

yes

based on PostgreSQL

Sharding

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Causal Clustering using Raft protocol

available in in Enterprise Version only

yes

based on PostgreSQL

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

yes, each node contains all data

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Causal and Eventual Consistency configurable in Causal Cluster setup
Immediate Consistency in stand-alone mode

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Relationships in graphs

yes

FOREIGN KEY constraints are not supported

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

Transactions are executed single-threaded within stored procedures

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Data access is serialized by the server

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

Snapshots and command logging

yes, flexibel persistency by using storage technologies like Apache Kafka, RocksDB or LMDB

In-memory capabilities

Is there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.

User concepts

Access control

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

yes

based on PostgreSQL

Users and roles with access to stored procedures

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

Elevate Fraud Detection With Neo4j on AWS: Uncover Hidden Patterns and Enhance Accuracy
20 September 2024

The Ethics of Generative AI: Understanding the Principles and Risks
18 September 2024

GraphSummit Europe 2024: Actionable Insights From Industry Leaders and Innovators
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

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.

Related products and services

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More resources

DB-Engines blog posts

Applying Graph Analytics to Game of Thrones
12 June 2019, Amy Hodler & Mark Needham, Neo4j (guest author)

MySQL, PostgreSQL and Redis are the winners of the March ranking
2 March 2016, Paul Andlinger

The openCypher Project: Help Shape the SQL for Graphs
22 December 2015, Emil Eifrem (guest author)

show all

Spatial database management systems
6 April 2021, Matthias Gelbmann

show all

Recent citations in the news

Neo4j lowers barriers to graph technology with gen AI copilot, 15x read capacity
4 September 2024, VentureBeat

Implementing GraphReader with Neo4j and LangGraph | by Tomaz Bratanic | Sep, 2024
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Neo4j Transforms Its Cloud Database Portfolio to Accelerate Graph Adoption & GenAI for the Enterprise
4 September 2024, PR Newswire

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18 July 2024, ComputerWeekly.com

Neo4j Transforms Its Cloud Database Portfolio to Accelerate Graph Adoption & GenAI for the Enterprise
9 September 2024, insideBIGDATA

provided by Google News

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31 August 2021, PR Newswire

Unveiling Volt Active Data’s game-changing approach to limitless app performance
16 October 2023, YourStory

VoltDB Aims for Fast Big Data Development
29 January 2015, ADT Magazine

VoltDB Announces Key New Hires
26 October 2021, citybiz

Solutions Review Sits Down with VoltDB CEO David Flower
17 April 2018, Solutions Review

provided by Google News

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