MongoDB vs Neo4j | Complete Comparision in 2022

The need for a NO-SQL database arose when the traditional database could not handle the unstructured and varying schema data. This blog will see a detailed comparison between MongoDB vs Neo4j and understand why one should choose one over another.

What is MongoDB

Mongodb is one of the most popular open-source, No-SQL databases.MongoDB is non-relational and can have a dynamic schema that enables users to insert the data into MongoDB without defining the schema.

In MongoDB, users also can define the schema to force users to insert data having particular fields. It can handle operational, transactional, and analytical workloads easily.

MongoDB uses the BSON format(which is similar to JSON) to represent the data and is easily scalable as per one’s requirements. You can interact with MongoDB either by command line or using an atlas(A UI on top of mongoDB).

Mongodb provides an enterprise version as well, which provides more features and enterprise support than the open-source mongoDB version.

What is Neo4j

Neo4j is one of the most popular graph databases. It is open-source software. A graph database shows the relationships between data in a graphical manner.

Neo4j stores the data in the nodes, whose nature is directed. It is a graph database based on graph theory, unlike the traditional database based on logic and set theory.

Neo4j is a NoSQL database in which data is represented as nodes (entities) and edges (relations), and each node or edge can have one or many properties (attributes).

Features of MongoDB vs Neo4j

Features of MongoDB

Please follow this link to learn about the features of mongodb.

Features ofNeo4j

The Features of Neo4j are as follows:

• SQL-like query: Neo4j has a SQL-like query language called Neo4j CQL(Cypher Query language). The Neo4j CQL is similar to the SQL query language.
• Follows graph model: Neo4j follows the model called graph model.
• ACID Property: Neo4j supports full ACID properties (Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, and Durability).
• Easily scalable: Neo4j can be easily scalable as the number of read/write increases without any downtime.
• Data replication: Neo4j allows us to replicate the data into multiple servers, ultimately leading to data safety and reliability.
• Web UI: Neo4j provides a beautiful Web UI that users can use to create and retrieve data.
• Support Indexes: Neo4j supports Indexes with the help of Apache Lucence.
• UNIQUE constraints: Neo4j supports UNIQUE constraints
• Extract data to multiple formats: Neo4j supports exporting data to languages like JSON or XLS format
• Supports multiple languages: Neo4j provides REST API, which can be accessed by various programming languages like JAVA, python, SCALA, C++

Advantage ofMongoDB vs Neo4j

Advantage ofMongoDB

Please follow this link to learn about the Advantage of Mongodb.

Advantage of Neo4j

The Advantages ofNeo4j are as follows:

• Easily scalable: Neo4j is a compelling graph database. It can be easily scaled vertically as the read/writes to the database increase.
• No schema: Neo4j is a no SQL database, allowing us to insert the data with varying schema.
• High availability: Neo4j is an enterprise database that provides features like replication, leading to the high availability of data.
• Real-time: Neo4j can be used for real-time analytics.
• Graph representation: With neo4j, we can easily represent the data in graphical format.
• Fast: Neo4j is pretty fast as it can retrieve massive data in a few seconds.
• SQL-like query language: Neo4j provides CQL (Cypher Query Language), similar to SQL query language, which can quickly retrieve the data.
• Easy to learn: Neo4j is pretty easy to understand compared to other graph databases.
• Good documentation: On the Neo4j official site, you will get a ton of examples to get started with neo4j in a few days.

Disadvantage ofMongoDB vs Neo4j

Disadvantage ofMongoDB

Please follow this link to learn about the disadvantage of Mongodb.

Disadvantage of Neo4j

The disadvantages ofNeo4j are as follows:

• In Neo4j, visualizing complex data is somewhere hard.
• In Neo4j, sometimes it is tough to see the space used and allocated memory for other configurations.
• Currently, Neo4J only supports Java-based libraries. It would be nice if neo4j also supports other popular languages.
• In neo4j, there is no support for a trigger like SQL databases.
• In neo4j, there is no support for data joins.
• Neo4j performance degrades when the data is vast.
• In Neo4j, visualizing the data where the number of relations is more than 10 is quite hard.
• The neo4j UI can be pretty much better to analyze the complex dataset.

MongoDB vs Neo4j

In this session, we will see the difference betweenMongoDB vs Neo4j:-

MongoDB vs Neo4j performance

Although comparing theperformance of a document database to a graph database is not a relevant comparison, though arangodb has made a detailed comparison of mongodb with Neo4j and other databases.

In most cases, MongoDB excels overNeo4j on performance, but in some scenarios,Neo4j excels overMongoDB.

Conclusion

Finally, we have come to the end of this detailed comparison between MongoDB vs Neo4j. I hope you like this tutorial. We have started with a brief introduction to MongoDB and Neo4j. We also explored the advantages, disadvantages, and features of MongoDB vs Neo4j. Finally, we have compared MongoDB vs Neo4j.

Please do let me know in the comment box if you face any difficulty in following along. Happy learning :)

More to Read?

Install MongoDB using docker

MongoDB vs Mysql

Mongodb vs PostgreSQL

MongoDB commands you should be aware of

MongoDB with python | pymongo