DBMS > Neo4j vs. PostgreSQL vs. RethinkDB vs. RRDtool vs. Sphinx
System Properties Comparison Neo4j vs. PostgreSQL vs. RethinkDB vs. RRDtool vs. Sphinx
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| Name | Neo4j Xexclude from comparison | PostgreSQL Xexclude from comparison | RethinkDB Xexclude from comparison | RRDtool Xexclude from comparison | Sphinx Xexclude from comparison | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Description | Scalable, ACID-compliant graph database designed with a high-performance distributed cluster architecture, available in self-hosted and cloud offerings | Widely used open source RDBMS  Developed as objectoriented DBMS (Postgres), gradually enhanced with 'standards' like SQL | DBMS for the Web with a mechanism to push updated query results to applications in realtime. | Industry standard data logging and graphing tool for time series data. RRD is an acronym for round-robin database. The data is stored in a circular buffer, thus the system storage footprint remains constant over time. | Open source search engine for searching in data from different sources, e.g. relational databases | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Primary database model | Graph DBMS | Relational DBMS with object oriented extensions, e.g.: user defined types/functions and inheritance. Handling of key/value pairs with hstore module. | Document store | Time Series DBMS | Search engine | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Secondary database models | Document store Graph DBMS with Apache AgeSpatial DBMS Vector DBMS with pgvector extension | Spatial DBMS | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Website | neo4j.com | www.postgresql.org | rethinkdb.com | oss.oetiker.ch/rrdtool | sphinxsearch.com | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Technical documentation | neo4j.com/docs | www.postgresql.org/docs | rethinkdb.com/docs | oss.oetiker.ch/rrdtool/doc | sphinxsearch.com/docs | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Developer | Neo4j, Inc. | PostgreSQL Global Development Group www.postgresql.org/developer | The Linux Foundation since July 2017 | Tobias Oetiker | Sphinx Technologies Inc. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Initial release | 2007 | 1989 1989: Postgres, 1996: PostgreSQL | 2009 | 1999 | 2001 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Current release | 5.19, April 2024 | 16.2, February 2024 | 2.4.1, August 2020 | 1.8.0, 2022 | 3.5.1, February 2023 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| License Commercial or Open Source | Open Source GPL version3, commercial licenses available | Open Source BSD | Open Source Apache Version 2 | Open Source GPL V2 and FLOSS | Open Source GPL version 2, commercial licence available | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Cloud-based only Only available as a cloud service | no | no | no | no | no | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 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. | Aiven for PostgreSQL: Fully managed PostgreSQL for developers with 70+ extensions and flexible orchestration tools. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Implementation language | Java, Scala | C | C++ | C Implementations in Java (e.g. RRD4J) and C# available | C++ | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Server operating systems | Linux Can also be used server-less as embedded Java database. OS X Solaris Windows | FreeBSD HP-UX Linux NetBSD OpenBSD OS X Solaris Unix Windows | Linux OS X Windows | HP-UX Linux | FreeBSD Linux NetBSD OS X Solaris Windows | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Data scheme | schema-free and schema-optional | yes | schema-free | yes | yes | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Typing predefined data types such as float or date | yes | yes | yes string, binary, float, bool, date, geometry | Numeric data only | no | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 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 specific XML-type available, but no XML query functionality. | no | no Exporting into and restoring from XML files possible | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Secondary indexes | yes pluggable indexing subsystem, by default Apache Lucene | yes | yes | no | yes full-text index on all search fields | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| SQL Support of SQL | no | yes standard with numerous extensions | no | no | SQL-like query language (SphinxQL) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| APIs and other access methods | Bolt protocol Cypher query language Java API Neo4j-OGM Object Graph MapperRESTful HTTP API Spring Data Neo4j TinkerPop 3 | ADO.NET JDBC native C library ODBC streaming API for large objects | in-process shared library Pipes | Proprietary protocol | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Supported programming languages | .Net Clojure Elixir Go Groovy Haskell Java JavaScript Perl PHP Python Ruby Scala | .Net C C++ Delphi Java JDBCJavaScript (Node.js) Perl PHP Python Tcl | C community-supported driver C# community-supported driverC++ community-supported driverClojure community-supported driverDart community-supported driverErlang community-supported driverGo community-supported driverHaskell community-supported driverJava official driverJavaScript (Node.js) official driverLisp community-supported driverLua community-supported driverObjective-C community-supported driverPerl community-supported driverPHP community-supported driverPython official driverRuby official driverScala community-supported driver | C with librrd library C# with a different implementation of RRDToolJava with a different implementation of RRDToolJavaScript (Node.js) with a different implementation of RRDToolLua Perl PHP with a wrapper libraryPython Ruby | C++ unofficial client library Java Perl unofficial client libraryPHP Python Ruby unofficial client library | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Server-side scripts Stored procedures | yes User defined Procedures and Functions | user defined functions realized in proprietary language PL/pgSQL or with common languages like Perl, Python, Tcl etc. | no | no | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Triggers | yes via event handler | yes | Client-side triggers through changefeeds | no | no | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Partitioning methods Methods for storing different data on different nodes | yes using Neo4j Fabric | partitioning by range, list and (since PostgreSQL 11) by hash | Sharding range based | none | Sharding Partitioning is done manually, search queries against distributed index is supported | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Replication methods Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes | Causal Clustering using Raft protocol available in in Enterprise Version only | Source-replica replication other methods possible by using 3rd party extensions | Source-replica replication | none | none | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| MapReduce Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods | no | no | yes | no | no | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 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 | Immediate Consistency | none | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Foreign keys Referential integrity | yes Relationships in graphs | yes | no | no | no | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Transaction concepts Support to ensure data integrity after non-atomic manipulations of data | ACID | ACID | Atomic single-document operations | no | no | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Concurrency Support for concurrent manipulation of data | yes | yes | yes MVCC based | yes by using the rrdcached daemon | yes | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Durability Support for making data persistent | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes The original contents of fields are not stored in the Sphinx index. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| In-memory capabilities Is there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only. | no | no | yes | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| User concepts Access control | Users, roles and permissions. Pluggable authentication with supported standards (LDAP, Active Directory, Kerberos) | fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard | yes users and table-level permissions | no | no | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| More information provided by the system vendor | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Neo4j | PostgreSQL | RethinkDB | RRDtool | Sphinx | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 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 | Creating the GQL Database Language Standard This Week in Neo4j: GraphRAG, Knowledge Graphs, Open Source AI, GraphQL and more This Week in Neo4j: Nodes 2024, Data Modelling, Events, Knowledge Graphs and more GQL is Here: Your Cypher Queries in a GQL World GQL: The ISO Standard for Graphs Has Arrived | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| 3rd parties | Redgate webinars: A series of key topics for new PostgreSQL users.
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| Neo4j | PostgreSQL | RethinkDB | RRDtool | Sphinx | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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