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DBMS > Amazon Aurora vs. Google Cloud Spanner vs. Neo4j

System Properties Comparison Amazon Aurora vs. Google Cloud Spanner vs. Neo4j

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines
NameAmazon Aurora  Xexclude from comparisonGoogle Cloud Spanner  Xexclude from comparisonNeo4j  Xexclude from comparison
DescriptionFully managed relational database service built for the cloud providing unparalleled high performance and availability at global scale for MySQL, PostgreSQL, and DSQLA 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.Scalable, ACID-compliant graph database designed with a high-performance distributed cluster architecture, available in self-hosted and cloud offerings
Primary database modelRelational DBMSRelational DBMSGraph DBMS
Secondary database modelsDocument store
Spatial DBMS
Vector DBMS
DB-Engines Ranking infomeasures the popularity of database management systemsranking trend
Trend Chart
Score7.25
Rank#46  Overall
#29  Relational DBMS
Score2.56
Rank#97  Overall
#50  Relational DBMS
Score47.91
Rank#20  Overall
#1  Graph DBMS
Websiteaws.amazon.com/­rds/­auroracloud.google.com/­spannerneo4j.com
Technical documentationdocs.aws.amazon.com/­AmazonRDS/­latest/­AuroraUserGuide/­CHAP_AuroraOverview.html
docs.aws.amazon.com/­aurora-dsql/­latest/­userguide/­what-is-aurora-dsql.html
cloud.google.com/­spanner/­docsneo4j.com/­docs
Social network pagesLinkedIn
DeveloperAmazonGoogleNeo4j, Inc.
Initial release201520172007
Current releaseAurora DSQL, November 2024 (preview), PostgreSQL: docs.aws.amazon.com/­AmazonRDS/­latest/­AuroraPostgreSQLReleaseNotes/­AuroraPostgreSQL.Updates.html , MySQL: docs.aws.amazon.com/­AmazonRDS/­latest/­AuroraMySQLReleaseNotes/­AuroraMySQL.release-calendars.html5.23, August 2024
License infoCommercial or Open SourcecommercialcommercialOpen Source infoGPL version3, commercial licenses available
Cloud-based only infoOnly available as a cloud serviceyesyesno
DBaaS offerings (sponsored links) infoDatabase as a Service

Providers of DBaaS offerings, please contact us to be listed.
Implementation languagePostgreSQL/MySQL: C, C++, Aurora DSQL: RustJava, Scala
Server operating systemsAmazon LinuxhostedLinux infoCan also be used server-less as embedded Java database.
OS X
Solaris
Windows
Data schemeyesyesschema-free and schema-optional
Typing infopredefined data types such as float or dateyesyesyes
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.yesno
Secondary indexesyesyesyes infopluggable indexing subsystem, by default Apache Lucene
SQL infoSupport of SQLyes, MySQL and PostgreSQL dialectsyes infoQuery statements complying to ANSI 2011no
APIs and other access methodsDSQL API: docs.aws.amazon.com/­aurora-dsql/­latest/­userguide/­CHAP_api_reference.html
MySQL wire protocol
PostgreSQL wire protocol
RDS Data API: docs.aws.amazon.com/­AmazonRDS/­latest/­UserGuide/­ProgrammingGuide.html
gRPC (using protocol buffers) API
JDBC infoAt present, JDBC supports read-only queries. No support for DDL or DML statements.
RESTful HTTP API
Bolt protocol
Cypher query language
Java API
Neo4j-OGM infoObject Graph Mapper
RESTful HTTP API
Spring Data Neo4j
TinkerPop 3
Supported programming languagesAda
C
C#
C++
D
Delphi
Eiffel
Erlang
Haskell
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Rust
Scheme
Tcl
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python
.Net
Clojure
Elixir
Go
Groovy
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala
Server-side scripts infoStored proceduresPL/pgSQL, MySQL stored program language, APG trusted language extensionsnoyes infoUser defined Procedures and Functions
TriggersAurora MySQL: Yes. Aurora PostgreSQL: Yes. Aurora DSQL: No.noyes infovia event handler
Partitioning methods infoMethods for storing different data on different nodesDBMS table partitioning, Horizontal storage partitioning, Sharding, Distributed horizontal partitioning (DSQL)Shardingyes using Neo4j Fabric
Replication methods infoMethods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodesFull replication
Logical replication
Snapshot replication
Transactional replication
Multi-source replication with 3 replicas for regional instances.Causal Clustering using Raft protocol infoavailable in in Enterprise Version only
MapReduce infoOffers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methodsnoyes infousing Google Cloud Dataflowno
Consistency concepts infoMethods to ensure consistency in a distributed systemEventual Consistency
Immediate/Strong Consistency
Immediate ConsistencyCausal and Eventual Consistency configurable in Causal Cluster setup
Immediate Consistency in stand-alone mode
Foreign keys infoReferential integrityyesyes infoby using interleaved tables, this features focuses more on performance improvements than on referential integrityyes infoRelationships in graphs
Transaction concepts infoSupport to ensure data integrity after non-atomic manipulations of dataACID, Multi-statementACID infoStrict serializable isolationACID
Concurrency infoSupport for concurrent manipulation of dataMultiversion concurrency control (MVCC) with fully compatible MySQL and PostgreSQL options. Optimistic concurrency control (OCC) in Aurora DSQL.yesyes
Durability infoSupport for making data persistentData is replicated across 3 Availability Zones (AZs) within a single AWS Region. Active-active multi-Region high availability across 3 Regions (2 active, 1 witness) and automated failover recovery with Aurora DSQL. Automated, continuous backup of data with point in time restore. Fault-tolerant, self-healing storage system.yesyes
In-memory capabilities infoIs there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.yesno
User concepts infoAccess controlRole based permissions
Row level security
Access rights for users, groups and roles based on Google Cloud Identity and Access Management (IAM)Users, roles and permissions. Pluggable authentication with supported standards (LDAP, Active Directory, Kerberos)
More information provided by the system vendor
Amazon AuroraGoogle Cloud SpannerNeo4j
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More resources
Amazon AuroraGoogle Cloud SpannerNeo4j
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