DBMS > Neo4j vs. Realm vs. RocksDB vs. SAP SQL Anywhere vs. Weaviate

System Properties Comparison Neo4j vs. Realm vs. RocksDB vs. SAP SQL Anywhere vs. Weaviate

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

A DBMS built for use on mobile devices that’s a fast, easy to use alternative to SQLite and Core Data

Embeddable persistent key-value store optimized for fast storage (flash and RAM)

RDBMS database and synchronization technologies for server, desktop, remote office, and mobile environments

An AI-native realtime vector database engine that integrates scalable machine learning models.

Primary database model

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

Score	44.46
Rank	#23	Overall
	#1	Graph DBMS

Score	7.60
Rank	#52	Overall
	#9	Document stores

Score	3.65
Rank	#85	Overall
	#11	Key-value stores

Score	4.25
Rank	#79	Overall
	#43	Relational DBMS

Score	1.73
Rank	#143	Overall
	#5	Vector DBMS

Website

neo4j.com

realm.io

rocksdb.org

www.sap.com/products/technology-platform/sql-anywhere.html

github.com/weaviate/weaviate
weaviate.io

Technical documentation

neo4j.com/docs

realm.io/docs

github.com/facebook/rocksdb/wiki

help.sap.com/docs/SAP_SQL_Anywhere

weaviate.io/developers/weaviate

Developer

Neo4j, Inc.

Realm, acquired by MongoDB in May 2019

Facebook, Inc.

SAP

formerly Sybase

Weaviate B.V.

Initial release

2007

2014

2013

1992

2019

Current release

5.20, May 2024

9.2.1, May 2024

17, July 2015

1.19, May 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

GPL version3, commercial licenses available

Open Source

BSD

commercial

Open Source

commercial license available with Weaviate Enterprise

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

C++

Server operating systems

Linux

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

Android
Backend: server-less
iOS
Windows

Linux

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free and schema-optional

yes

schema-free

yes

yes, maps to GraphQL interface

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

string, int, float, geo point, date, cross reference, fuzzy references

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

all data objects are indexed in a semantic vector space (the Contextionary), all primitive fields are indexed

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

GraphQL is used as query language

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

C++ API
Java API

ADO.NET
HTTP API
JDBC
ODBC

GraphQL query language
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Supported programming languages

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

.Net
Java

with Android only
Objective-C
React Native
Swift

C
C++
Go
Java
Perl
Python
Ruby

C
C#
C++
Delphi
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

JavaScript / TypeScript
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

User defined Procedures and Functions

runs within the applications so server-side scripts are unnecessary

yes, in C/C++, Java, .Net or Perl

Triggers

yes

via event handler

yes

Change Listeners

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

yes using Neo4j Fabric

none

horizontal partitioning

none

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Causal Clustering using Raft protocol

available in in Enterprise Version only

none

yes

Source-replica replication

Database mirroring

yes

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

Eventual Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Relationships in graphs

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

yes

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

In-Memory realm

yes

User concepts

Access control

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

yes

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

API Keys
OpenID Connect Discovery

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Neo4j delivers graph technology that has been battle tested for performance and scale...
» more

Weaviate is an open source vector database that is robust, scalable, cloud-native,...
» more

Competitive advantages

Neo4j is the market leader, graph database category creator, and the most widely...
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Flexible deployment - Free, open source or fully-managed cloud vector database service...
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Typical application scenarios

Real-Time Recommendations Master Data Management Identity and Access Management Network...
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As a database supporting the development of generative AI and semantic search applications...
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Key customers

Over 800 commercial customers and over 4300 startups use Neo4j. Flagship customers...
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All companies that have data.
» more

Market metrics

Neo4j boasts the world's largest graph database ecosystem with more than 140 million...
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As of mid 2023: Over 2 million open source downloads 3500+ Weaviate Slack community...
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Licensing and pricing models

GPL v3 license that can be used all the places where you might use MySQL. Neo4j Commercial...
» more

Weaviate is open-source, and free to use. Weaviate is also available as a fully managed...
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News

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22 May 2024

7 Tips for Submitting Your NODES 2024 Talk
22 May 2024

How to Configure Neo4j Aura With AWS PrivateLink
21 May 2024

This Week in Neo4j: Podcast, GraphRAG, GraphQL, Chatbot and more
18 May 2024

Neo4j Joins the Connect with Confluent Partner Program
16 May 2024

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and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.