Performance Comparison Analysis of ArangoDB, MySQL, and Neo4j: An Experimental Study of Querying Connected Data

TL;DR

This study compares the performance of ArangoDB, MySQL, and Neo4j in handling connected graph data, focusing on query speed, energy, CPU, and memory usage to inform technology selection.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive performance evaluation of graph and relational databases, including energy and resource consumption, which is rarely addressed in prior research.

Findings

Neo4j outperforms MySQL and ArangoDB in query speed.

Energy, CPU, and memory usage metrics are reported for all databases.

Results aid in selecting appropriate database technologies for graph data applications.

Abstract

Choosing and developing performant database solutions helps organizations optimize their operational practices and decision-making. Since graph data is becoming more common, it is crucial to develop and use them in big data with complex relationships with high and consistent performance. However, legacy database technologies such as MySQL are tailored to store relational databases and need to perform more complex queries to retrieve graph data. Previous research has dealt with performance aspects such as CPU and memory usage. In contrast, energy usage and temperature of the servers are lacking. Thus, this paper evaluates and compares state-of-the-art graphs and relational databases from the performance aspects to allow a more informed selection of technologies. Graph-based big data applications benefit from informed selection database technologies for data retrieval and analytics problems. The results show that Neo4j performs faster in querying connected data than MySQL and ArangoDB, and energy, CPU, and memory usage performances are reported in this paper.