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DBMS > Neo4j vs. RDF4J vs. Sphinx vs. Sqrrl vs. TypeDB

System Properties Comparison Neo4j vs. RDF4J vs. Sphinx vs. Sqrrl vs. TypeDB

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines
NameNeo4j  Xexclude from comparisonRDF4J infoformerly known as Sesame  Xexclude from comparisonSphinx  Xexclude from comparisonSqrrl  Xexclude from comparisonTypeDB infoformerly named Grakn  Xexclude from comparison
Sqrrl has been acquired by Amazon and became a part of Amazon Web Services. It has been removed from the DB-Engines ranking.
DescriptionScalable, ACID-compliant graph database designed with a high-performance distributed cluster architecture, available in self-hosted and cloud offeringsRDF4J is a Java framework for processing RDF data, supporting both memory-based and a disk-based storage.Open source search engine for searching in data from different sources, e.g. relational databasesAdaptable, secure NoSQL built on Apache AccumuloTypeDB is a strongly-typed database with a rich and logical type system and TypeQL as its query language
Primary database modelGraph DBMSRDF storeSearch engineDocument store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store
Wide column store
Graph DBMS
Relational DBMS infoOften described as a 'hyper-relational' database, since it implements the 'Entity-Relationship Paradigm' to manage complex data structures and ontologies.
DB-Engines Ranking infomeasures the popularity of database management systemsranking trend
Trend Chart
Score44.46
Rank#23  Overall
#1  Graph DBMS
Score0.69
Rank#230  Overall
#9  RDF stores
Score5.98
Rank#56  Overall
#5  Search engines
Score0.65
Rank#234  Overall
#20  Graph DBMS
#107  Relational DBMS
Websiteneo4j.comrdf4j.orgsphinxsearch.comsqrrl.comtypedb.com
Technical documentationneo4j.com/­docsrdf4j.org/­documentationsphinxsearch.com/­docstypedb.com/­docs
DeveloperNeo4j, Inc.Since 2016 officially forked into an Eclipse project, former developer was Aduna Software.Sphinx Technologies Inc.Amazon infooriginally Sqrrl Data, Inc.Vaticle
Initial release20072004200120122016
Current release5.19, April 20243.5.1, February 20232.26.3, January 2024
License infoCommercial or Open SourceOpen Source infoGPL version3, commercial licenses availableOpen Source infoEclipse Distribution License (EDL), v1.0.Open Source infoGPL version 2, commercial licence availablecommercialOpen Source infoGPL Version 3, commercial licenses available
Cloud-based only infoOnly available as a cloud servicenonononono
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, ScalaJavaC++JavaJava
Server operating systemsLinux infoCan also be used server-less as embedded Java database.
OS X
Solaris
Windows
Linux
OS X
Unix
Windows
FreeBSD
Linux
NetBSD
OS X
Solaris
Windows
LinuxLinux
OS X
Windows
Data schemeschema-free and schema-optionalyes infoRDF Schemasyesschema-freeyes
Typing infopredefined data types such as float or dateyesyesnoyesyes
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.no
Secondary indexesyes infopluggable indexing subsystem, by default Apache Luceneyesyes infofull-text index on all search fieldsyesyes
SQL infoSupport of SQLnonoSQL-like query language (SphinxQL)nono
APIs and other access methodsBolt protocol
Cypher query language
Java API
Neo4j-OGM infoObject Graph Mapper
RESTful HTTP API
Spring Data Neo4j
TinkerPop 3
Java API
RIO infoRDF Input/Output
Sail API
SeRQL infoSesame RDF Query Language
Sesame REST HTTP Protocol
SPARQL
Proprietary protocolAccumulo Shell
Java API
JDBC
ODBC
RESTful HTTP API
Thrift
gRPC protocol
TypeDB Console (shell)
TypeDB Studio (Visualisation software- previously TypeDB Workbase)
Supported programming languages.Net
Clojure
Elixir
Go
Groovy
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala
Java
PHP
Python
C++ infounofficial client library
Java
Perl infounofficial client library
PHP
Python
Ruby infounofficial client library
Actionscript
C infousing GLib
C#
C++
Cocoa
Delphi
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Smalltalk
All JVM based languages
Groovy
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python
Scala
Server-side scripts infoStored proceduresyes infoUser defined Procedures and Functionsyesnonono
Triggersyes infovia event handleryesnonono
Partitioning methods infoMethods for storing different data on different nodesyes using Neo4j FabricnoneSharding infoPartitioning is done manually, search queries against distributed index is supportedSharding infomaking use of HadoopSharding infoby using Cassandra
Replication methods infoMethods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodesCausal Clustering using Raft protocol infoavailable in in Enterprise Version onlynonenoneselectable replication factor infomaking use of HadoopMulti-source replication infoby using Cassandra
MapReduce infoOffers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methodsnononoyesyes infoby using Apache Kafka and Apache Zookeeper
Consistency concepts infoMethods to ensure consistency in a distributed systemCausal and Eventual Consistency configurable in Causal Cluster setup
Immediate Consistency in stand-alone mode
Immediate Consistency infoDocument store kept consistent with combination of global timestamping, row-level transactions, and server-side consistency resolution.Immediate Consistency
Foreign keys infoReferential integrityyes infoRelationships in graphsnonono infosubstituted by the relationship feature
Transaction concepts infoSupport to ensure data integrity after non-atomic manipulations of dataACIDACID infoIsolation support depends on the API usednoAtomic updates per row, document, or graph entityACID
Concurrency infoSupport for concurrent manipulation of datayesyesyesyesyes
Durability infoSupport for making data persistentyesyes infoin-memory storage is supported as wellyes infoThe original contents of fields are not stored in the Sphinx index.yesyes
In-memory capabilities infoIs there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.no
User concepts infoAccess controlUsers, roles and permissions. Pluggable authentication with supported standards (LDAP, Active Directory, Kerberos)nonoCell-level Security, Data-Centric Security, Role-Based Access Control (RBAC), Attribute-Based Access Control (ABAC)yes infoat REST API level; other APIs in progress
More information provided by the system vendor
Neo4jRDF4J infoformerly known as SesameSphinxSqrrlTypeDB infoformerly named Grakn
Specific characteristicsNeo4j delivers graph technology that has been battle tested for performance and scale...
» more
TypeDB is a polymorphic database with a conceptual data model, a strong subtyping...
» more
Competitive advantagesNeo4j is the market leader, graph database category creator, and the most widely...
» more
TypeDB provides a new level of expressivity, extensibility, interoperability, and...
» more
Typical application scenariosReal-Time Recommendations Master Data Management Identity and Access Management Network...
» more
Life sciences : TypeDB makes working with biological data much easier and accelerates...
» 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
Apache f or language drivers, and AGPL and Commercial for the database server. The...
» more
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13 May 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
Neo4jRDF4J infoformerly known as SesameSphinxSqrrlTypeDB infoformerly named Grakn
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