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DBMS > mSQL vs. Neo4j vs. SurrealDB vs. TimescaleDB

System Properties Comparison mSQL vs. Neo4j vs. SurrealDB vs. TimescaleDB

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines
NamemSQL infoMini SQL  Xexclude from comparisonNeo4j  Xexclude from comparisonSurrealDB  Xexclude from comparisonTimescaleDB  Xexclude from comparison
DescriptionmSQL (Mini SQL) is a simple and lightweight RDBMSScalable, ACID-compliant graph database designed with a high-performance distributed cluster architecture, available in self-hosted and cloud offeringsA fully ACID transactional, developer-friendly, multi-model DBMSA time series DBMS optimized for fast ingest and complex queries, based on PostgreSQL
Primary database modelRelational DBMSGraph DBMSDocument store
Graph DBMS
Time Series DBMS
Secondary database modelsRelational DBMS
DB-Engines Ranking infomeasures the popularity of database management systemsranking trend
Trend Chart
Score1.11
Rank#174  Overall
#78  Relational DBMS
Score47.91
Rank#20  Overall
#1  Graph DBMS
Score1.08
Rank#176  Overall
#30  Document stores
#16  Graph DBMS
Score3.59
Rank#72  Overall
#5  Time Series DBMS
Websitehughestech.com.au/­products/­msqlneo4j.comsurrealdb.comwww.timescale.com
Technical documentationneo4j.com/­docssurrealdb.com/­docsdocs.timescale.com
DeveloperHughes TechnologiesNeo4j, Inc.SurrealDB LtdTimescale
Initial release1994200720222017
Current release4.4, October 20215.23, August 2024v1.5.0, May 20242.15.0, May 2024
License infoCommercial or Open Sourcecommercial infofree licenses can be providedOpen Source infoGPL version3, commercial licenses availableOpen SourceOpen Source infoApache 2.0
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.
Implementation languageCJava, ScalaRustC
Server operating systemsAIX
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
Solaris SPARC/x86
Windows
Linux infoCan also be used server-less as embedded Java database.
OS X
Solaris
Windows
Linux
macOS
Windows
Linux
OS X
Windows
Data schemeyesschema-free and schema-optionalschema-freeyes
Typing infopredefined data types such as float or dateyesyesyesnumerics, strings, booleans, arrays, JSON blobs, geospatial dimensions, currencies, binary data, other complex data types
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.noyes
Secondary indexesyesyes infopluggable indexing subsystem, by default Apache Luceneyes
SQL infoSupport of SQLA subset of ANSI SQL is implemented infono subqueries, aggregate functions, views, foreign keys, triggersnoSQL-like query languageyes infofull PostgreSQL SQL syntax
APIs and other access methodsJDBC
ODBC
Bolt protocol
Cypher query language
Java API
Neo4j-OGM infoObject Graph Mapper
RESTful HTTP API
Spring Data Neo4j
TinkerPop 3
GraphQL
RESTful HTTP API
WebSocket
ADO.NET
JDBC
native C library
ODBC
streaming API for large objects
Supported programming languagesC
C++
Delphi
Java
Perl
PHP
Tcl
.Net
Clojure
Elixir
Go
Groovy
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala
Deno
Go
JavaScript (Node.js)
Rust
.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java infoJDBC
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl
Server-side scripts infoStored proceduresnoyes infoUser defined Procedures and Functionsuser defined functions, PL/pgSQL, PL/Tcl, PL/Perl, PL/Python, PL/Java, PL/PHP, PL/R, PL/Ruby, PL/Scheme, PL/Unix shell
Triggersnoyes infovia event handleryes
Partitioning methods infoMethods for storing different data on different nodesnoneyes using Neo4j Fabricyes, across time and space (hash partitioning) attributes
Replication methods infoMethods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodesnoneCausal Clustering using Raft protocol infoavailable in in Enterprise Version onlySource-replica replication with hot standby and reads on replicas info
MapReduce infoOffers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methodsnononono
Consistency concepts infoMethods to ensure consistency in a distributed systemnoneCausal and Eventual Consistency configurable in Causal Cluster setup
Immediate Consistency in stand-alone mode
Immediate Consistency
Foreign keys infoReferential integritynoyes infoRelationships in graphsyes
Transaction concepts infoSupport to ensure data integrity after non-atomic manipulations of datanoACIDACIDACID
Concurrency infoSupport for concurrent manipulation of datanoyesyesyes
Durability infoSupport for making data persistentyesyesyesyes
In-memory capabilities infoIs there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.nono
User concepts infoAccess controlnoUsers, roles and permissions. Pluggable authentication with supported standards (LDAP, Active Directory, Kerberos)yes, based on authentication and database rulesfine grained access rights according to SQL-standard
More information provided by the system vendor
mSQL infoMini SQLNeo4jSurrealDBTimescaleDB
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13 May 2025

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10 May 2025

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7 May 2025

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