DBMS > RDF4J vs. Snowflake vs. SwayDB vs. Vertica vs. Virtuoso

System Properties Comparison RDF4J vs. Snowflake vs. SwayDB vs. Vertica vs. Virtuoso

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

RDF4J is a Java framework for processing RDF data, supporting both memory-based and a disk-based storage.

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

An embeddable, non-blocking, type-safe key-value store for single or multiple disks and in-memory storage

Cloud or off-cloud analytical database and query engine for structured and semi-structured streaming and batch data. Machine learning platform with built-in algorithms, data preparation capabilities, and model evaluation and management via SQL or Python.

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

Primary database model

Column oriented

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

Secondary database models

Spatial DBMS
Time Series DBMS

Spatial DBMS

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

Score	0.69
Rank	#230	Overall
	#9	RDF stores

Score	121.33
Rank	#9	Overall
	#6	Relational DBMS

Score	0.00
Rank	#382	Overall
	#59	Key-value stores

Score	10.68
Rank	#43	Overall
	#27	Relational DBMS

Score	4.26
Rank	#78	Overall
	#13	Document stores
	#4	Graph DBMS
	#2	Native XML DBMS
	#42	Relational DBMS
	#2	RDF stores
	#9	Search engines

Website

virtuoso.openlinksw.com

Technical documentation

rdf4j.org/documentation

docs.snowflake.net/manuals/index.html

vertica.com/documentation

docs.openlinksw.com/virtuoso

Developer

Since 2016 officially forked into an Eclipse project, former developer was Aduna Software.

Snowflake Computing Inc.

Simer Plaha

OpenText

previously Micro Focus and Hewlett Packard

OpenLink Software

Initial release

2004

2014

2018

2005

1998

Current release

12.0.3, January 2023

7.2.11, September 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Eclipse Distribution License (EDL), v1.0.

commercial

Open Source

GNU Affero GPL V3.0

commercial

Limited community edition free

Open Source

GPLv2, extended commercial license available

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

on-premises, all major clouds - Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform and containers

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

Providers of DBaaS offerings, please contact us to be listed.

Implementation language

Java

Scala

C++

Server operating systems

Linux
OS X
Unix
Windows

hosted

Linux

AIX
FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Data scheme

yes

RDF Schemas

yes

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

schema-free

Yes, but also semi-structure/unstructured data storage, and complex hierarchical data (like Parquet) stored and/or queried.

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

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

No Indexes Required. Different internal optimization strategy, but same functionality included.

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

Full 1999 standard plus machine learning, time series and geospatial. Over 650 functions.

yes

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

APIs and other access methods

Java API
RIO

RDF Input/Output
Sail API
SeRQL

Sesame RDF Query Language
Sesame REST HTTP Protocol
SPARQL

CLI Client
JDBC
ODBC

ADO.NET
JDBC
Kafka Connector
ODBC
RESTful HTTP API
Spark Connector
vSQL

character-based, interactive, front-end utility

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

Java
PHP
Python

JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

Java
Kotlin
Scala

C#
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
R

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

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

user defined functions

yes, PostgreSQL PL/pgSQL, with minor differences

yes

Virtuoso PL

Triggers

yes

similar concept for controling cloud resources

yes, called Custom Alerts

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

yes

none

horizontal partitioning, hierarchical partitioning

yes

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

none

yes

none

Multi-source replication

One, or more copies of data replicated across nodes, or object-store used for repository.

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

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Bi-directional Spark integration

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

Isolation support depends on the API used

ACID

Atomic execution of operations

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

in-memory storage is supported as well

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

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard; supports Kerberos, LDAP, Ident and hash

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

Deploy-anywhere database for large-scale analytical deployments. Deploy off-cloud,...
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Virtuoso is a modern multi-model RDBMS for managing data represented as tabular relations...
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Competitive advantages

Fast, scalable, and capable of high concurrency. Separation of compute/storage leverages...
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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

Communication and network analytics, Embedded analytics, Fraud monitoring and Risk...
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Used for — Analytics/BI Conceptual Data Virtualization Enterprise Knowledge Graphs...
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Key customers

Abiba Systems, Adform, adMarketplace, AmeriPride, Anritsu, AOL, Avito, Auckland Transport,...
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Broad use across enterprises and governments including — European Union (EU) US Government...
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Market metrics

Largest installed-base of Multi-Model RDBMS for AI-friendly Knowledge Graphs Platform...
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Licensing and pricing models

Cost-based models and subscription-based models are both available. One license is...
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Available in both Commercial Enterprise and Open Source (GPL v2) Editions Feature...
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