DBMS > Neo4j vs. Snowflake vs. TerarkDB vs. TerminusDB vs. VoltDB

System Properties Comparison Neo4j vs. Snowflake vs. TerarkDB vs. TerminusDB vs. VoltDB

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

Cloud-based data warehousing service for structured and semi-structured data

A key-value store forked from RocksDB with advanced compression algorithms. It can be used standalone or as a storage engine for MySQL and MongoDB

Scalable Graph Database platform making enterprise data available by exploiting inferred entities and relationships

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

Primary database model

Secondary database models

Document store
RDF store

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

Score	44.89
Rank	#21	Overall
	#1	Graph DBMS

Score	130.36
Rank	#8	Overall
	#5	Relational DBMS

Score	0.08
Rank	#367	Overall
	#56	Key-value stores

Score	0.23
Rank	#316	Overall
	#27	Graph DBMS

Score	1.47
Rank	#157	Overall
	#73	Relational DBMS

Website

neo4j.com

www.snowflake.com

github.com/bytedance/terarkdb

terminusdb.com

www.voltdb.com

Technical documentation

neo4j.com/docs

docs.snowflake.net/manuals/index.html

bytedance.larkoffice.com/docs/doccnZmYFqHBm06BbvYgjsHHcKc

terminusdb.github.io/terminusdb/#

docs.voltdb.com

Developer

Neo4j, Inc.

Snowflake Computing Inc.

ByteDance, originally Terark

DataChemist Ltd.

VoltDB Inc.

Initial release

2007

2014

2016

2018

2010

Current release

5.20, May 2024

11.0.0, January 2023

11.3, April 2022

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

GPL version3, commercial licenses available

commercial

restricted open source version available

Open Source

GPL V3

Open Source

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

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

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++

Prolog, Rust

Java, C++

Server operating systems

Linux

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

hosted

Linux

Linux
OS X

for development

Data scheme

schema-free and schema-optional

yes

support of semi-structured data formats (JSON, XML, Avro)

schema-free

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

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

SQL-like query language (WOQL)

yes

only a subset of SQL 99

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

CLI Client
JDBC
ODBC

C++ API
Java API

OWL
RESTful HTTP API
WOQL (Web Object Query Language)

Java API
JDBC
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Supported programming languages

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

JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

C++
Java

JavaScript
Python

C#
C++
Erlang

not officially supported
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
PHP
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

User defined Procedures and Functions

user defined functions

yes

Java

Triggers

yes

via event handler

similar concept for controling cloud resources

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

yes using Neo4j Fabric

yes

none

Graph Partitioning

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Causal Clustering using Raft protocol

available in in Enterprise Version only

yes

none

Journaling Streams

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

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

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Data access is serialized by the server

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

in-memory journaling

yes

Snapshots and command logging

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

User concepts

Access control

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

Users with fine-grained authorization concept, user roles and pluggable authentication

Role-based access control

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...
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Competitive advantages

Neo4j is the market leader, graph database category creator, and the most widely...
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Typical application scenarios

Real-Time Recommendations Master Data Management Identity and Access Management Network...
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Key customers

Over 800 commercial customers and over 4300 startups use Neo4j. Flagship customers...
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Market metrics

Neo4j boasts the world's largest graph database ecosystem with more than 140 million...
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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...
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News

This Week in Neo4j: Importing Data, NODES, GenAI, Going Meta and more
1 June 2024

openCypher Will Pave the Road to GQL for Cypher Implementers
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

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