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

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

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Fully managed relational database service built for the cloud providing unparalleled high performance and availability at global scale for MySQL, PostgreSQL, and DSQL

A 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.

Widely used open source RDBMS

Developed as objectoriented DBMS (Postgres), gradually enhanced with 'standards' like SQL

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

with object oriented extensions, e.g.: user defined types/functions and inheritance. Handling of key/value pairs with hstore module.

Secondary database models

Document store
Spatial DBMS
Vector DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS

with Apache Age
Spatial DBMS
Vector DBMS

with pgvector extension

DB-Engines Ranking measures the popularity of database management systems
Trend Chart

Score	7.33
Rank	#46	Overall
	#29	Relational DBMS

Score	2.56
Rank	#97	Overall
	#50	Relational DBMS

Score	667.25
Rank	#4	Overall
	#4	Relational DBMS

Website

aws.amazon.com/rds/aurora

cloud.google.com/spanner

www.postgresql.org

Technical documentation

docs.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/docs

www.postgresql.org/docs

Social network pages

Developer

Amazon

Google

PostgreSQL Global Development Group

www.postgresql.org/developer

Initial release

2015

2017

1989

1989: Postgres, 1996: PostgreSQL

Current release

Aurora 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.html

16.4, August 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

BSD

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

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Implementation language

PostgreSQL/MySQL: C, C++, Aurora DSQL: Rust

Server operating systems

Amazon Linux

hosted

FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
NetBSD
OpenBSD
OS X
Solaris
Unix
Windows

Data scheme

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

XML support

Some form of processing data in XML format, e.g. support for XML data structures, and/or support for XPath, XQuery or XSLT.

yes

specific XML-type available, but no XML query functionality.

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes, MySQL and PostgreSQL dialects

yes

Query statements complying to ANSI 2011

yes

standard with numerous extensions

APIs and other access methods

DSQL 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

At present, JDBC supports read-only queries. No support for DDL or DML statements.
RESTful HTTP API

ADO.NET
JDBC
native C library
ODBC
streaming API for large objects

Supported programming languages

Ada
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
C
C++
Delphi
Java

JDBC
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
Tcl

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

PL/pgSQL, MySQL stored program language, APG trusted language extensions

user defined functions

realized in proprietary language PL/pgSQL or with common languages like Perl, Python, Tcl etc.

Triggers

Aurora MySQL: Yes. Aurora PostgreSQL: Yes. Aurora DSQL: No.

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

DBMS table partitioning, Horizontal storage partitioning, Sharding, Distributed horizontal partitioning (DSQL)

Sharding

partitioning by range, list and (since PostgreSQL 11) by hash

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Full replication
Logical replication
Snapshot replication
Transactional replication

Multi-source replication with 3 replicas for regional instances.

Source-replica replication

other methods possible by using 3rd party extensions

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

using Google Cloud Dataflow

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency
Immediate/Strong Consistency

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

by using interleaved tables, this features focuses more on performance improvements than on referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

Support to ensure data integrity after non-atomic manipulations of data

ACID, Multi-statement

ACID

Strict serializable isolation

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

Multiversion concurrency control (MVCC) with fully compatible MySQL and PostgreSQL options. Optimistic concurrency control (OCC) in Aurora DSQL.

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

Data 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.

yes

In-memory capabilities

Is there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.

yes

User concepts

Access control

Role based permissions
Row level security

Access rights for users, groups and roles based on Google Cloud Identity and Access Management (IAM)

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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