H2 Database Engine vs. Neo4j

This really depends on the use case. For an in-memory replacement database for running unit test cases with, H2 Database Engine is an excellent option. However, if you are looking for a general purpose database for your production systems, then H2 Database Engine is not suited for this purpose.

Incentivized

Its very well suited for storing graph types relationship information, such as a group of people and their relationships. Data modeling this sort of information in a traditional SQL database is a pain and inefficient. Using Neo4J allows for efficient modeling of data while providing rich querying capabilities using Cypher. Its also a great fit for any programming language because of its support for REST API. It's less appropriate for any other data structure other than Graph data. So as with any DB, evaluate the data structure and query and if the querying revolves around relationships, then Neo4J is a fit. If there is more need for looking up individual nodes and their associated information, Neo4J might not be the most efficient solution in the market.

Incentivized

• Can run as an in-memory database.
• Simple and quick to get started with, and is light weight (only 2MB).
• SQL compliant so it compatible with most relational databases.

Incentivized

• When joins are a common in a relational store, switching to Neo4j is better
• When pattern matching and surfacing interesting insights is the goal, neo4j's cypher is pretty powerful
• When schema is not completely known beforehand and needs to be evolved with time

Incentivized

• There's a warning in official FAQ "Is it Reliable?"-section which makes it seem like H2 is not yet a mature product.
• If raw SQL queries are used there maybe be differences between MySQL & H2. ORM library should be used.
• Support seems to be community-based only.

Incentivized

• It would be nice to have some concept of namespaces, or some way of roughly making a single instance multi-tenant. It'd be nice to make sandboxing easier.
• Automatic backups could be improved.

Incentivized

[Based on] Query Language, Performance on small and large data sets, integration and deployment, analysis, API support, Interactive UI.

Incentivized

Both MySQL & H2 [Database Engine] are relational databases & use same query language. Application features can be implemented with both but if it's expected that the application will be used by large user base or is complex MySQL is better. Cloud providers provide scaling support for MySQL and also it's more battle-tested. H2 is good when it's a small application as H2 is easier & quicker to set up.

Incentivized

I have not used anything like Neo4J because of how unique it is in the work that it allows me to do. I am not aware of any other graph database platforms and it might be because it is a growing area (especially in the world of pharmaceuticals). I would be open to trying other softwares though.

Incentivized

• Doesn't take time from developers, once it's configs are set up for testing it works in everyone's development environments
• Easy to integrate in application, no need to setup separate database software, no maintenance
• No need to deal with infrastructure related issues/costs - database runs in same machine as the application that uses it.

Incentivized

• For experimentation purposes, it had a positive impact on my company. It was very natural to work with Neo4j and so intuitive to visualize the data.
• Neo4j community edition is free, which is what we experimented on. So there was no investment up front apart from employee's time. But this quickly gave results and it was time well spent.
• Neo4j is a cool but very new technology. It was hard to have people onboard, especially some of the leadership and relational folks.

Incentivized