DBMS > Datomic vs. Google Cloud Datastore vs. Lovefield vs. Snowflake vs. XTDB

System Properties Comparison Datomic vs. Google Cloud Datastore vs. Lovefield vs. Snowflake vs. XTDB

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Datomic builds on immutable values, supports point-in-time queries and uses 3rd party systems for durability

Automatically scaling NoSQL Database as a Service (DBaaS) on the Google Cloud Platform

Embeddable relational database for web apps written in pure JavaScript

Cloud-based data warehousing service for structured and semi-structured data

A general purpose database with bitemporal SQL and Datalog and graph queries

Primary database model

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

Score	1.59
Rank	#150	Overall
	#69	Relational DBMS

Score	4.47
Rank	#76	Overall
	#12	Document stores

Score	0.29
Rank	#293	Overall
	#133	Relational DBMS

Score	121.33
Rank	#9	Overall
	#6	Relational DBMS

Score	0.11
Rank	#343	Overall
	#46	Document stores

Website

www.datomic.com

cloud.google.com/datastore

google.github.io/lovefield

www.snowflake.com

github.com/xtdb/xtdb
www.xtdb.com

Technical documentation

docs.datomic.com

cloud.google.com/datastore/docs

github.com/google/lovefield/blob/master/docs/spec_index.md

docs.snowflake.net/manuals/index.html

www.xtdb.com/docs

Developer

Cognitect

Google

Snowflake Computing Inc.

Juxt Ltd.

Initial release

2012

2008

2014

2019

Current release

1.0.6735, June 2023

2.1.12, February 2017

1.19, September 2021

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

limited edition free

commercial

Open Source

Apache 2.0

commercial

Open Source

MIT License

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

Providers of DBaaS offerings, please contact us to be listed.

Implementation language

Java, Clojure

JavaScript

Clojure

Server operating systems

All OS with a Java VM

hosted

server-less, requires a JavaScript environment (browser, Node.js)

tested with Chrome, Firefox, IE, Safari

hosted

All OS with a Java 8 (and higher) VM
Linux

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

yes

support of semi-structured data formats (JSON, XML, Avro)

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

yes, details here

yes

yes, extensible-data-notation format

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

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like query language (GQL)

SQL-like query language

via JavaScript builder pattern

yes

limited SQL, making use of Apache Calcite

APIs and other access methods

RESTful HTTP API

gRPC (using protocol buffers) API
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

CLI Client
JDBC
ODBC

HTTP REST
JDBC

Supported programming languages

Clojure
Java

.Net
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby

JavaScript

JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

Clojure
Java

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

Transaction Functions

using Google App Engine

user defined functions

Triggers

By using transaction functions

Callbacks using the Google Apps Engine

Using read-only observers

similar concept for controling cloud resources

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

But extensive use of caching in the application peers

Sharding

none

yes

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

none

But extensive use of caching in the application peers

Multi-source replication using Paxos

none

yes

yes, each node contains all data

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

Immediate Consistency

Immediate Consistency or Eventual Consistency depending on type of query and configuration

Strong Consistency is default for entity lookups and queries within an Entity Group (but can instead be made eventually consistent). Other queries are always eventual consistent.

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

via ReferenceProperties or Ancestor paths

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

Serializable Isolation within Transactions, Read Committed outside of Transactions

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

using external storage systems (e.g. Cassandra, DynamoDB, PostgreSQL, Couchbase and others)

yes

yes, by using IndexedDB or the cloud service Firebase Realtime Database

yes

yes, flexibel persistency by using storage technologies like Apache Kafka, RocksDB or LMDB

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

recommended only for testing and development

yes

using MemoryDB

User concepts

Access control

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

Users with fine-grained authorization concept, user roles and pluggable authentication

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