DBMS > Amazon Neptune vs. Apache Spark (SQL) vs. PostgreSQL vs. TimescaleDB

System Properties Comparison Amazon Neptune vs. Apache Spark (SQL) vs. PostgreSQL vs. TimescaleDB

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Fast, reliable graph database built for the cloud

Apache Spark SQL is a component on top of 'Spark Core' for structured data processing

Widely used open source RDBMS

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

A time series DBMS optimized for fast ingest and complex queries, based on PostgreSQL

Primary database model

Graph DBMS
RDF store

Relational DBMS

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

Time Series DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
Graph DBMS

with Apache Age
Spatial DBMS
Vector DBMS

with pgvector extension

Relational DBMS

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

Score	2.13
Rank	#111	Overall
	#9	Graph DBMS
	#5	RDF stores

Score	21.62
Rank	#29	Overall
	#18	Relational DBMS

Score	674.32
Rank	#4	Overall
	#4	Relational DBMS

Score	3.59
Rank	#72	Overall
	#5	Time Series DBMS

Website

aws.amazon.com/neptune

spark.apache.org/sql

www.postgresql.org

www.timescale.com

Technical documentation

aws.amazon.com/neptune/developer-resources

spark.apache.org/docs/latest/sql-programming-guide.html

www.postgresql.org/docs

docs.timescale.com

Developer

Amazon

Apache Software Foundation

PostgreSQL Global Development Group

www.postgresql.org/developer

Timescale

Initial release

2017

2014

1989

1989: Postgres, 1996: PostgreSQL

2017

Current release

3.5.0 ( 2.13), September 2023

16.4, August 2024

2.15.0, May 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

BSD

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

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Implementation language

Scala

Server operating systems

hosted

Linux
OS X
Windows

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

Linux
OS X
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

numerics, strings, booleans, arrays, JSON blobs, geospatial dimensions, currencies, binary data, other complex data types

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.

yes

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like DML and DDL statements

yes

standard with numerous extensions

yes

full PostgreSQL SQL syntax

APIs and other access methods

OpenCypher
RDF 1.1 / SPARQL 1.1
TinkerPop Gremlin

JDBC
ODBC

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

Supported programming languages

C#
Go
Java
JavaScript
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

Java
Python
R
Scala

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java

JDBC
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
Tcl

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java

JDBC
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

user defined functions

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

user defined functions, PL/pgSQL, PL/Tcl, PL/Perl, PL/Python, PL/Java, PL/PHP, PL/R, PL/Ruby, PL/Scheme, PL/Unix shell

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

yes, utilizing Spark Core

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

yes, across time and space (hash partitioning) attributes

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-availability zones high availability, asynchronous replication for up to 15 read replicas within a single region. Global database clusters consists of a primary write DB cluster in one region, and up to five secondary read DB clusters in different regions. Each secondary region can have up to 16 reader instances.

none

Source-replica replication

other methods possible by using 3rd party extensions

Source-replica replication with hot standby and reads on replicas

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Relationships in graphs

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

with encyption-at-rest

yes

In-memory capabilities

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

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users and roles can be defined via the AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM)

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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