DBMS > DuckDB vs. Google Cloud Spanner vs. HarperDB vs. Snowflake

System Properties Comparison DuckDB vs. Google Cloud Spanner vs. HarperDB vs. Snowflake

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

An embeddable, in-process, column-oriented SQL OLAP RDBMS

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.

Ultra-low latency distributed database with an intuitive REST API supporting NoSQL and SQL (including joins). Deployment of functions and databases simultaneously with a consolidated node-level architecture.

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

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Document store

Relational DBMS

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

Score	4.57
Rank	#74	Overall
	#40	Relational DBMS

Score	2.89
Rank	#103	Overall
	#52	Relational DBMS

Score	0.55
Rank	#248	Overall
	#38	Document stores

Score	121.33
Rank	#9	Overall
	#6	Relational DBMS

Website

duckdb.org

cloud.google.com/spanner

www.harperdb.io

www.snowflake.com

Technical documentation

duckdb.org/docs

cloud.google.com/spanner/docs

docs.harperdb.io/docs

docs.snowflake.net/manuals/index.html

Developer

Google

HarperDB

Snowflake Computing Inc.

Initial release

2018

2017

2014

Current release

0.10, February 2024

3.1, August 2021

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

MIT License

commercial

free community edition available

commercial

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

C++

Node.js

Server operating systems

server-less

hosted

Linux
OS X

hosted

Data scheme

yes

dynamic schema

yes

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

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

JSON data types

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

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

Query statements complying to ANSI 2011

SQL-like data manipulation statements

yes

APIs and other access methods

Arrow Database Connectivity (ADBC)
CLI Client
JDBC
ODBC

gRPC (using protocol buffers) API
JDBC

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

JDBC
ODBC
React Hooks
RESTful HTTP/JSON API
WebSocket

CLI Client
JDBC
ODBC

Supported programming languages

C
C#

3rd party driver
C++
Crystal

3rd party driver
Go

3rd party driver
Java
Lisp

3rd party driver
Python
R
Ruby

3rd party driver
Rust
Swift
Zig

3rd party driver

Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

.Net
C
C#
C++
ColdFusion
D
Dart
Delphi
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Lisp
MatLab
Objective C
Perl
PHP
PowerShell
Prolog
Python
R
Ruby
Rust
Scala
Swift

JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

Custom Functions

since release 3.1

user defined functions

Triggers

similar concept for controling cloud resources

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Sharding

A table resides as a whole on one (or more) nodes in a cluster

yes

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

none

Multi-source replication with 3 replicas for regional instances.

yes

the nodes on which a table resides can be defined

yes

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

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

Strict serializable isolation

Atomic execution of specific operations

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes, multi-version concurrency control (MVCC)

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

yes, using LMDB

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

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

Access rights for users and roles

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

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