DBMS > Neo4j vs. TimescaleDB vs. Virtuoso

System Properties Comparison Neo4j vs. TimescaleDB vs. Virtuoso

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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 time series DBMS optimized for fast ingest and complex queries, based on PostgreSQL

Virtuoso is a multi-model hybrid-RDBMS that supports management of data represented as relational tables and/or property graphs

Primary database model

Graph DBMS

Time Series DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS
Native XML DBMS
Relational DBMS
RDF store
Search engine

Secondary database models

Relational DBMS

Spatial DBMS

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

Score	60.14
Rank	#19	Overall
	#1	Graph DBMS

Score	4.70
Rank	#83	Overall
	#5	Time Series DBMS

Score	6.01
Rank	#71	Overall
	#11	Document stores
	#3	Graph DBMS
	#2	Native XML DBMS
	#39	Relational DBMS
	#2	RDF stores
	#9	Search engines

Website

neo4j.com

www.timescale.com

virtuoso.openlinksw.com

Technical documentation

neo4j.com/docs

docs.timescale.com

docs.openlinksw.com/virtuoso

Developer

Neo4j, Inc.

Timescale

OpenLink Software

Initial release

2007

2017

1998

Current release

4.4.7, May 2022

2.6.0, February 2022

08.03.3316, March 2020

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

GPL version3, commercial licenses available

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

GPLv2, extended commercial license available

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

Server operating systems

Linux

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

Linux
OS X
Windows

AIX
FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free and schema-optional

yes

SQL - Standard relational schema
RDF - Quad (S, P, O, G) or Triple (S, P, O)
XML - DTD, XML Schema
DAV - freeform filesystem objects, plus User Defined Types a/k/a Dynamic Extension Type

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

numerics, strings, booleans, arrays, JSON blobs, geospatial dimensions, currencies, binary data, other complex data types

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

full PostgreSQL SQL syntax

yes

SQL-92, SQL-200x, SQL-3, SQLX

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

ADO.NET
JDBC
native C library
ODBC
streaming API for large objects

ADO.NET
GeoSPARQL
HTTP API
JDBC
Jena RDF API
ODBC
OLE DB
RDF4J API
RESTful HTTP API
Sesame REST HTTP Protocol
SOAP webservices
SPARQL 1.1
WebDAV
XPath
XQuery
XSLT

Supported programming languages

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

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java

JDBC
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl

.Net
C
C#
C++
Java
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Visual Basic

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

User defined Procedures and Functions

user defined functions, PL/pgSQL, PL/Tcl, PL/Perl, PL/Python, PL/Java, PL/PHP, PL/R, PL/Ruby, PL/Scheme, PL/Unix shell

yes

Virtuoso PL

Triggers

yes

via event handler

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

yes using Neo4j Fabric

yes, across time and space (hash partitioning) attributes

yes

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Causal Clustering using Raft protocol

available in in Enterprise Version only

Source-replica replication with hot standby and reads on replicas

Chain, star, and bi-directional replication
Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

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

Transaction concepts

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

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

User concepts

Access control

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

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Fine-grained Attribute-Based Access Control (ABAC) in addition to typical coarse-grained Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) according to SQL-standard. Pluggable authentication with supported standards (LDAP, Active Directory, Kerberos)

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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Timescale is the creator of TimescaleDB , the first open-source relational database...
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Virtuoso is a modern multi-model RDBMS for managing data represented as tabular relations...
» more

Competitive advantages

Neo4j is the market leader, graph database category creator, and the most widely...
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TimescaleDB is purpose-built to scale and handle time-series data workloads and is...
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Performance & Scale — as exemplified by DBpedia and the LOD Cloud it spawned, i.e.,...
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Typical application scenarios

Real-Time Recommendations Master Data Management Identity and Access Management Network...
» more

Time-series Analytics TimescaleDB boosts the performance of PostgreSQL for time-series...
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Used for — Analytics/BI Conceptual Data Virtualization Enterprise Knowledge Graphs...
» more

Key customers

Over 800 commercial customers and over 4300 startups use Neo4j. Flagship customers...
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TransferWise, Maersk, Walmart, Comcast, LaunchDarkly, IBM, NOV, Cisco, Nutanix, Warner...
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Broad use across enterprises and governments including — European Union (EU) US Government...
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Market metrics

Neo4j boasts the world's largest graph database ecosystem with more than 140 million...
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With over 12,700 GitHub stars and growing, 1,000,000 active databases, and an active...
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Largest installed-base of Multi-Model RDBMS for AI-friendly Knowledge Graphs Platform...
» more

Licensing and pricing models

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

TimescaleDB is available as a self-hosted product under two licenses, the Timescale...
» more

Available in both Commercial Enterprise and Open Source (GPL v2) Editions Feature...
» more

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