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DBMS > 4D vs. Google Cloud Spanner vs. Milvus vs. Sphinx

System Properties Comparison 4D vs. Google Cloud Spanner vs. Milvus vs. Sphinx

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines
Name4D infoformer name: 4th Dimension  Xexclude from comparisonGoogle Cloud Spanner  Xexclude from comparisonMilvus  Xexclude from comparisonSphinx  Xexclude from comparison
DescriptionApplication development environment with integrated database management systemA horizontally scalable, globally consistent, relational database service. It is the externalization of the core Google database that runs the biggest aspects of Google, like Ads and Google Play.A DBMS designed for efficient storage of vector data and vector similarity searchesOpen source search engine for searching in data from different sources, e.g. relational databases
Primary database modelRelational DBMSRelational DBMSVector DBMSSearch engine
DB-Engines Ranking infomeasures the popularity of database management systemsranking trend
Trend Chart
Score2.47
Rank#110  Overall
#54  Relational DBMS
Score2.84
Rank#100  Overall
#51  Relational DBMS
Score2.78
Rank#103  Overall
#4  Vector DBMS
Score5.95
Rank#55  Overall
#5  Search engines
Websitewww.4d.comcloud.google.com/­spannermilvus.iosphinxsearch.com
Technical documentationdeveloper.4d.comcloud.google.com/­spanner/­docsmilvus.io/­docs/­overview.mdsphinxsearch.com/­docs
Developer4D, IncGoogleSphinx Technologies Inc.
Initial release1984201720192001
Current releasev20, April 20232.4.4, May 20243.5.1, February 2023
License infoCommercial or Open SourcecommercialcommercialOpen Source infoApache Version 2.0Open Source infoGPL version 2, commercial licence available
Cloud-based only infoOnly available as a cloud servicenoyesnono
DBaaS offerings (sponsored links) infoDatabase as a Service

Providers of DBaaS offerings, please contact us to be listed.
Zilliz Cloud – Cloud-native service for Milvus
Implementation languageC++, GoC++
Server operating systemsOS X
Windows
hostedLinux
macOS info10.14 or later
Windows infowith WSL 2 enabled
FreeBSD
Linux
NetBSD
OS X
Solaris
Windows
Data schemeyesyesyes
Typing infopredefined data types such as float or dateyesyesVector, Numeric and Stringno
XML support infoSome form of processing data in XML format, e.g. support for XML data structures, and/or support for XPath, XQuery or XSLT.yesnono
Secondary indexesyesyesnoyes infofull-text index on all search fields
SQL infoSupport of SQLyes infoclose to SQL 92yes infoQuery statements complying to ANSI 2011noSQL-like query language (SphinxQL)
APIs and other access methodsODBC
RESTful HTTP API infoby using 4D Mobile
SOAP webservices
gRPC (using protocol buffers) API
JDBC infoAt present, JDBC supports read-only queries. No support for DDL or DML statements.
RESTful HTTP API
RESTful HTTP APIProprietary protocol
Supported programming languages4D proprietary IDE
PHP
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python
C++ infounofficial client library
Java
Perl infounofficial client library
PHP
Python
Ruby infounofficial client library
Server-side scripts infoStored proceduresyesnonono
Triggersyesnonono
Partitioning methods infoMethods for storing different data on different nodesnoneShardingShardingSharding infoPartitioning is done manually, search queries against distributed index is supported
Replication methods infoMethods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodesMulti-source replicationMulti-source replication with 3 replicas for regional instances.none
MapReduce infoOffers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methodsnoyes infousing Google Cloud Dataflownono
Consistency concepts infoMethods to ensure consistency in a distributed systemImmediate ConsistencyImmediate ConsistencyBounded Staleness
Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency
Session Consistency
Tunable Consistency
Foreign keys infoReferential integrityyesyes infoby using interleaved tables, this features focuses more on performance improvements than on referential integritynono
Transaction concepts infoSupport to ensure data integrity after non-atomic manipulations of dataACIDACID infoStrict serializable isolationnono
Concurrency infoSupport for concurrent manipulation of datayesyesyesyes
Durability infoSupport for making data persistentyesyesyesyes infoThe original contents of fields are not stored in the Sphinx index.
In-memory capabilities infoIs there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.nonoyes
User concepts infoAccess controlUsers and groupsAccess rights for users, groups and roles based on Google Cloud Identity and Access Management (IAM)Role based access control and fine grained access rightsno
More information provided by the system vendor
4D infoformer name: 4th DimensionGoogle Cloud SpannerMilvusSphinx
Specific characteristicsMilvus is an open-source and cloud-native vector database built for production-ready...
» more
Competitive advantagesHighly available, versatile, and robust with millisecond latency. Supports batch...
» more
Typical application scenariosRAG: retrieval augmented generation Video media : video understanding, video deduplication....
» more
Key customersMilvus is trusted by thousands of enterprises, including PayPal, eBay, IKEA, LINE,...
» more
Market metricsAs of January 2024, 25k+ GitHub stars 10M+ downloads and installations​ ​ 3k+ enterprise...
» more
Licensing and pricing modelsMilvus was released under the open-source Apache License 2.0 in October 2019. Fully-managed...
» more

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More resources
4D infoformer name: 4th DimensionGoogle Cloud SpannerMilvusSphinx
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