When comparing OrientDB vs MarkLogic, the Slant community recommends OrientDB for most people. In the question“What are the best databases for building social network like apps?” OrientDB is ranked 3rd 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 High performance graph database
While known as a document-oriented noSQL database, MarkLogic also provides a standards-compliant triple store that can be used to enrich document-shaped data with semantic links.
Pro Enterprise strength security and transactions
The two fatal flaws of many open source solutions is lack of integrated security at the element level and full ACID transaction support. MarkLogic has both and is trusted with some of the worlds most sensitive data. It is the engine that powers healthcare.gov, which despite some early problems (not caused by MarkLogic) is an amazing technological achievement.
Pro Multi-model database
MarkLogic supports text, documents, key-value/tuple, graphs, tables and object models that don't require extensive data-modeling and normalization that is part of the lifecycle process of relational database management systems. For sites similar to LinkedIn, Facebook, IMDB and even search engines, MarkLogic provides a unique set of features that are all in one box.
Pro No ETL Required
MarkLogic can store all your enterprise data in it's original format without needing to know a schema in advanced. You can shove pretty much any structured or unstructured data directly into MarkLogic, and it will automatically index everything and make it available for future processing. Of course it is fully schema aware and will apply and enforce schema constraints when available, but the tedious normalization that is required for relational databases is not necessary.
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 Lack of experts
MarkLogic is not as popular as some of it's peers, and even though it is highly standards-based, the pool of talent that is well-versed in the underlying technology is small compared with some competing platforms (e.g, Oracle, IBM, Apache).
Con Enterprise software is not open source and can get expensive. Not for casual projects.
MarkLogic can be downloaded and implemented in development environments for free. However, for production use, it is priced for enterprises, not startups with tight budgets. Open source requires a lot more elbow grease to do the same thing.
