When comparing OrientDB vs MarkLogic, the Slant community recommends OrientDB for most people. In the question“What are the best ACID-compliant scalable databases?” OrientDB is ranked 5th while MarkLogic is ranked 11th. The most important reason people chose OrientDB is:
This database is primarily, or historically, thought of as a graph database. However, it is actually a multi-model database that supports a variety of noSQL models (key-value, document, etc.).
Specs
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Pros
Pro Multi-model database (document, object, graph)
This database is primarily, or historically, thought of as a graph database. However, it is actually a multi-model database that supports a variety of noSQL models (key-value, document, etc.).
Pro Open Source commercial friendly license (Apache 2)
The Apache 2 license is one of the most liberal licenses. You can use OrientDB for any purpose for free.
Pro Free clustering support
Unlike other NoSql databases, OrientDB offers clustering support for free. Furthermore, it's not a basic Master/Slave, but it supports Master-Master replication + Sharding.
Pro Distributed Graph Database with relational type Documents
Pro Supports sql as well as other query languages
It can be queried in a number of ways, but the ability to query with SQL makes it a bit more familiar to use.
Pro Multi-master replication
OrientDB is incredibly scalable thanks to its multi-master replication. All nodes in a cluster can both read and write.
Pro Full text search
Full text search support is available when using Lucene based indexing algorithm.
Pro Performance
OrientDB is very fast, especially when it comes to relationships between records (or "links").
Pro Enterprise version available
The Community Edition is free and covers many features, but an Enterprise Edition is available (prices are transparent, published online) with 24x7 support.
Pro Search engine native
No other ACID database has even close to the text handling capabilities that are built-in to MarkLogic. Many multi-model databases rely on Lucene to provide text indexing, which leads to unnecessary latency and complexity.
Pro Massively scalable
Configuring MarkLogic for scale out is simple with both APIs and UI based mechanisms to add and manage cluster nodes that auto-shard and redistribute themselves for maximum efficiency.
Pro XML powerhouse
MarkLogic supports XML natively and adheres to all W3C standards surrounding XML. It even uses XQuery as a powerful application engine. Recent editions are also JSON native, which makes it fit in with modern JavaScript and web-centric applications.
Pro Uniquely offers full ACID transactions in a multi-model database
MarkLogic is the only Multi-model database in the world that is fully ACID and treats unstructured content as a first class citizen.
Cons
Con Not well known
It's a very unfortunate thing, but it's true. Not many people know of this gem so that makes it difficult to find community support at times. It also makes it hard to get people on board with it who shop products by brand name or flashy marketing. It also means there are fewer code snippets, libraries, and frameworks that consider it. While it's interoperability is good with SQL support and Tinkerpop, it still doesn't change the fact that many things don't give it much thought and that can lead to more work as a developer sometimes.
Con Learning curve
A lot of effort went into making OrientDB easy and familiar to use (such as SQL queries for example). However, it's important to understand the database engine a bit and how it works in general (links for example). This involves a bit of a learning curve if you're not familiar with graph databases. Not an enormous curve or anything, but it's still a consideration.
Con Bulk inserts may cause an out of memory crash
When doing inserts in OrientDB you have to be careful to do them one at a time. Bulk inserts may cause out of memory error
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Con Enterprise focused
MarkLogic is more focused on the specific needs of enterprise customers who need ACID rigor and element level security. There are less costly options if eventual consistency and application-level security are good enough for you.
Con Proprietary
License is $18k/year
Con Too good to be true
If you are skeptical about product claims, MarkLogic may seem a bit too good to be true. MANY applications could benefit from implementing MarkLogic instead of creaky old RDBMS or immature NoSQL databases or even search engines like Lucene/Solr/Elastic.