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DBMS > Datomic vs. Google Cloud Spanner vs. Neo4j

System Properties Comparison Datomic vs. Google Cloud Spanner vs. Neo4j

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines
NameDatomic  Xexclude from comparisonGoogle Cloud Spanner  Xexclude from comparisonNeo4j  Xexclude from comparison
DescriptionDatomic builds on immutable values, supports point-in-time queries and uses 3rd party systems for durabilityA 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
DB-Engines Ranking infomeasures the popularity of database management systemsranking trend
Trend Chart
Score1.49
Rank#142  Overall
#64  Relational DBMS
Score2.56
Rank#97  Overall
#50  Relational DBMS
Score47.91
Rank#20  Overall
#1  Graph DBMS
Websitewww.datomic.comcloud.google.com/­spannerneo4j.com
Technical documentationdocs.datomic.comcloud.google.com/­spanner/­docsneo4j.com/­docs
DeveloperCognitectGoogleNeo4j, Inc.
Initial release201220172007
Current release1.0.7180, July 20245.23, August 2024
License infoCommercial or Open Sourcecommercial infolimited edition freecommercialOpen Source infoGPL version3, commercial licenses available
Cloud-based only infoOnly available as a cloud servicenoyesno
DBaaS offerings (sponsored links) infoDatabase as a Service

Providers of DBaaS offerings, please contact us to be listed.
Implementation languageJava, ClojureJava, Scala
Server operating systemsAll OS with a Java VMhostedLinux 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.nono
Secondary indexesyesyesyes infopluggable indexing subsystem, by default Apache Lucene
SQL infoSupport of SQLnoyes infoQuery statements complying to ANSI 2011no
APIs and other access methodsRESTful HTTP APIgRPC (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 languagesClojure
Java
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python
.Net
Clojure
Elixir
Go
Groovy
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala
Server-side scripts infoStored proceduresyes infoTransaction Functionsnoyes infoUser defined Procedures and Functions
TriggersBy using transaction functionsnoyes infovia event handler
Partitioning methods infoMethods for storing different data on different nodesnone infoBut extensive use of caching in the application peersShardingyes using Neo4j Fabric
Replication methods infoMethods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodesnone infoBut extensive use of caching in the application peersMulti-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 systemImmediate ConsistencyImmediate ConsistencyCausal and Eventual Consistency configurable in Causal Cluster setup
Immediate Consistency in stand-alone mode
Foreign keys infoReferential integritynoyes 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 dataACIDACID infoStrict serializable isolationACID
Concurrency infoSupport for concurrent manipulation of datayesyesyes
Durability infoSupport for making data persistentyes infousing external storage systems (e.g. Cassandra, DynamoDB, PostgreSQL, Couchbase and others)yesyes
In-memory capabilities infoIs there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.yes inforecommended only for testing and developmentno
User concepts infoAccess controlnoAccess 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
DatomicGoogle Cloud SpannerNeo4j
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More resources
DatomicGoogle Cloud SpannerNeo4j
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