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DBMS > Neo4j vs. RDF4J vs. Sphinx vs. TimesTen

System Properties Comparison Neo4j vs. RDF4J vs. Sphinx vs. TimesTen

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines
NameNeo4j  Xexclude from comparisonRDF4J infoformerly known as Sesame  Xexclude from comparisonSphinx  Xexclude from comparisonTimesTen  Xexclude from comparison
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 databasesIn-Memory RDBMS compatible to Oracle
Primary database modelGraph DBMSRDF storeSearch engineRelational DBMS
DB-Engines Ranking infomeasures the popularity of database management systemsranking trend
Trend Chart
Score44.89
Rank#21  Overall
#1  Graph DBMS
Score0.74
Rank#222  Overall
#9  RDF stores
Score5.95
Rank#55  Overall
#5  Search engines
Score1.36
Rank#161  Overall
#75  Relational DBMS
Websiteneo4j.comrdf4j.orgsphinxsearch.comwww.oracle.com/­database/­technologies/­related/­timesten.html
Technical documentationneo4j.com/­docsrdf4j.org/­documentationsphinxsearch.com/­docsdocs.oracle.com/­database/­timesten-18.1
DeveloperNeo4j, Inc.Since 2016 officially forked into an Eclipse project, former developer was Aduna Software.Sphinx Technologies Inc.Oracle, TimesTen Performance Software, HP infooriginally founded in HP Labs it was acquired by Oracle in 2005
Initial release2007200420011998
Current release5.20, May 20243.5.1, February 202311 Release 2 (11.2.2.8.0)
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 availablecommercial
Cloud-based only infoOnly available as a cloud servicenononono
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++
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
AIX
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
Solaris SPARC/x86
Windows
Data schemeschema-free and schema-optionalyes infoRDF Schemasyesyes
Typing infopredefined data types such as float or dateyesyesnoyes
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 fieldsyes
SQL infoSupport of SQLnonoSQL-like query language (SphinxQL)yes
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 protocolJDBC
ODBC
ODP.NET
Oracle Call Interface (OCI)
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
C
C++
Java
PL/SQL
Server-side scripts infoStored proceduresyes infoUser defined Procedures and FunctionsyesnoPL/SQL
Triggersyes infovia event handleryesnono
Partitioning methods infoMethods for storing different data on different nodesyes using Neo4j FabricnoneSharding infoPartitioning is done manually, search queries against distributed index is supportednone
Replication methods infoMethods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodesCausal Clustering using Raft protocol infoavailable in in Enterprise Version onlynonenoneMulti-source replication
Source-replica replication
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
Immediate Consistency or Eventual Consistency depending on configuration
Foreign keys infoReferential integrityyes infoRelationships in graphsnoyes
Transaction concepts infoSupport to ensure data integrity after non-atomic manipulations of dataACIDACID infoIsolation support depends on the API usednoACID
Concurrency infoSupport for concurrent manipulation of datayesyesyesyes
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.yes infoby means of logfiles and checkpoints
In-memory capabilities infoIs there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.yes
User concepts infoAccess controlUsers, roles and permissions. Pluggable authentication with supported standards (LDAP, Active Directory, Kerberos)nonofine grained access rights according to SQL-standard
More information provided by the system vendor
Neo4jRDF4J infoformerly known as SesameSphinxTimesTen
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
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