Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

neo4j VS Datomic

Compare neo4j VS Datomic and see what are their differences

neo4j logo neo4j

Meet Neo4j: The graph database platform powering today's mission-critical enterprise applications, including artificial intelligence, fraud detection and recommendations.

Datomic logo Datomic

The fully transactional, cloud-ready, distributed database
  • neo4j Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-05-09
  • Datomic Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-14

neo4j

Website
neo4j.com
$ Details
Release Date
2007 January
Startup details
Country
United States
State
California
City
San Mateo
Founder(s)
Emil Eifrem
Employees
500 - 999

neo4j features and specs

  • Graph DB

Datomic features and specs

  • Immutability
    Datomic employs an append-only data model where data is never overwritten but instead appended, ensuring historical data is always available and providing strong consistency.
  • Time Travel Queries
    Datomic allows you to query the database as of any point in time, facilitating auditing and debugging by allowing easy access to historical data states.
  • Rich Data Model
    Supports complex data types like maps and sets directly within its schema, providing a flexible way to represent data.
  • ACID Transactions
    Datomic supports fully ACID-compliant transactions, ensuring reliable and predictable database operations.
  • Scalability
    Separates storage and compute, allowing for horizontal scaling of read operations, making it suitable for handling large datasets.
  • Query Flexibility
    Offers a powerful query language that supports recursive queries, making it suitable for complex data retrieval needs.

Possible disadvantages of Datomic

  • Complexity
    The architecture of Datomic can be complex to understand and implement, particularly for teams unfamiliar with its design principles.
  • Cost
    Can be expensive to operate, especially in a cloud environment, where costs increase with the amount of data stored and the compute resources required.
  • Limited Write Throughput
    Due to its append-only design, Datomic can have limited write throughput, which may not be suitable for applications with heavy write requirements.
  • Closed Source
    Datomic is a proprietary database system, which may not appeal to organizations that prefer open-source solutions.
  • Learning Curve
    Requires a learning curve as its conceptual model and query language are different from traditional databases, potentially requiring additional training.
  • Dependency on AWS
    Relying on AWS ecosystem for the storage backend can limit choices for deployment environments, impacting flexibility.

neo4j videos

All about GRAND Stack: GraphQL, React, Apollo, and Neo4j

More videos:

  • Review - Kevin Van Gundy | Building a Recommendation Engine with Neo4j and Python

Datomic videos

KotlinConf 2018 - Datomic: The Most Innovative DB You've Never Heard Of by August Lilleaas

More videos:

  • Review - "Real-World Datomic: An Experience Report" by Craig Andera (2013)
  • Review - Rich Hickey on Datomic Ions, September 12, 2018

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to neo4j and Datomic)
Databases
76 76%
24% 24
Graph Databases
100 100%
0% 0
Relational Databases
0 0%
100% 100
NoSQL Databases
86 86%
14% 14

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare neo4j and Datomic

neo4j Reviews

Top 15 Free Graph Databases
Neo4j is an open-source graph database, implemented in Java described as embedded, disk-based, fully transactional Java persistence engine that stores data structured in graphs rather than in tables. Neo4j Community Edition
ArangoDB vs Neo4j - What you can't do with Neo4j
Multi-Model: Neo4j is a single-model graph database. It does not support any other data models. If your application requires a document or key/value store, you would have to use a second database technology to support it. Being multi-model, ArangoDB allows you to not only use one database for everything,but run ad hoc queries on data stored in different models.

Datomic Reviews

We have no reviews of Datomic yet.
Be the first one to post

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, neo4j seems to be more popular. It has been mentiond 34 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

neo4j mentions (34)

  • 6 retrieval augmented generation (RAG) techniques you should know
    The key difference lies in the retrieval mechanism. Vector databases focus on semantic similarity by comparing numerical embeddings, while graph databases emphasize relations between entities. Two solutions for graph databases are Neptune from Amazon and Neo4j. In a case where you need a solution that can accommodate both vector and graph, Weaviate fits the bill. - Source: dev.to / 9 days ago
  • LLM to extract and auto generate knowledge graph - step by step, in ~100 lines of python
    Neo4j is a leading graph database that is easy to use and powerful for knowledge graphs. - Source: dev.to / 11 days ago
  • 10 Ways AI Can Speed Up your Mobile App Development
    Neo4j is one of the most popular graph databases. It offers powerful querying capabilities through its Cypher query language. - Source: dev.to / 2 months ago
  • Databases in 2024: A Year in Review
    Great heads up. I wonder about graph databases. He mentioned and both include the graph use case and I wonder how they compare to . - Source: Hacker News / 4 months ago
  • Installing Neo4j In Ubuntu
    The first blog in this series is to install neo4j - desktop version and few plugins which would help us to build an application. I am using Ubuntu 22.04.4 LTS. - Source: dev.to / 9 months ago
View more

Datomic mentions (0)

We have not tracked any mentions of Datomic yet. Tracking of Datomic recommendations started around Mar 2021.

What are some alternatives?

When comparing neo4j and Datomic, you can also consider the following products

ArangoDB - A distributed open-source database with a flexible data model for documents, graphs, and key-values.

MySQL - The world's most popular open source database

Redis - Redis is an open source in-memory data structure project implementing a distributed, in-memory key-value database with optional durability.

MongoDB - MongoDB (from "humongous") is a scalable, high-performance NoSQL database.

OrientDB - OrientDB - The World's First Distributed Multi-Model NoSQL Database with a Graph Database Engine.

Matisse - Matisse is a post-relational SQL database.