RDF Databases edit  

Our list of and information on commercial, open source and cloud based RDF databases and associated technologies, including MarkLogic, AllegroGraph, Stardog, BlazeGraph and alternatives to these.

Category Definition

Databases designed to support the storage of RDF (or triple) data. RDF (Resource Description Framework) is a W3C data model standard that describes data as subject–predicate–object expressions (or triples). This allows the creation of graphs of knowledge, however unlike more general purpose graph databases, there is no support for properties or labels - everything is represented using triples. Data is queried using the SPARQL query language (another W3C standard). Internally, data can be considered to be stored as a single table containing three columns (the subject, predicate and object), with indexing to support the traversal and enumeration of predicates (relationships) for a given subject. A number of triple ontologies (or schemas) are also available that define standard subject/object and predicate types allowing for data interchange, including OWL and RDFS. The W3C standards were introduced to support semantic web and Linked Open Data use cases that focus on semantics and inference.

Further Information

The W3C standards for RDF and SPARQL are available online at https://www.w3.org/RDF/ and http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-sparql-query/ respectively. The relevant Wikipedia pages are also good places to start at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_Description_Framework and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPARQL.

DB Engines has a list of RDF databases at https://db-engines.com/en/ranking/rdf+store

The following analyst material covers a number of technologies in this category:

RDF Frameworks

Eclipse RDF4JAn Eclipse open source project for working with RDF data, including provision of a standard SPARQL interface that can be integrated with backend databases. Previously known as Sesame - http://rdf4j.org/
JenaFramework for developing Semantic Web and Linked Data applications in Java - http://jena.apache.org/
Commons RDFCommons library for working with RDF data - http://commons.apache.org/proper/commons-rdf/
RedlandOpen source C libraries for working with RDF data - http://librdf.org/
CubicWebhttps://www.cubicweb.org/

Commercial RDF Databases

Amazon NeptuneGraph and RDF database service with support for TinkerPop Gremlin and RDF SPARQL - https://aws.amazon.com/neptune/
MarkLogicCommercial ACID compliant XML/JSON document store with support for creation of triple indexes over documents queryable via SPARQL - http://www.marklogic.com/
OpenLink Virtuoso Universal ServerSupports persistence of documents, relational, RDF and graph data - https://virtuoso.openlinksw.com/
Franz AllegroGraphCommercial ACID compliant that supports both RDF and property graphs, with a free edition available - https://allegrograph.com/allegrograph/
Ontotext GraphDBCommercial RDF database, previously known as OWLIM, and with a free edition available - https://ontotext.com/products/graphdb/
Complexible StardogRDF database that also support property graphs and data virtualisation, with a community edition available - http://www.stardog.com/
DydraCloud based - https://dydra.com/
SparkleDBhttps://www.syssurge.com/Products/SparkleDB/Home.aspx
Cray Graph Enginehttps://www.cray.com/products/analytics/cray-graph-engine
Oracle Spatial and Graph option for Oracle DatabaseAdds RDF (and graph) capabilities to the Oracle database - http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/options/spatialandgraph/overview/index.html
RDF Graph for Oracle NoSQL Databasehttp://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/database-technologies/nosqldb/overview/index.html

Open Source RDF Databases

BlazeGraphOpen Source RDF graph database with property graph features, queryable via SPARQL and Tinkerpop - https://www.blazegraph.com/
4storehttps://github.com/4store/4store
RedStorehttps://www.aelius.com/njh/redstore/
MulgaraOpen source java RDF database - http://mulgara.org/
BrightstarDBOpen Source RDF database for the .NET platform - http://brightstardb.com/
StrabonSpatiotemporal RDF store - http://www.strabon.di.uoa.gr/
Rya (Incubating)RDF triple store built on Apache Accumulo - http://rya.apache.org/
eBay BeamDistributed RDF store - https://github.com/eBay/beam

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