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DBMS > DuckDB vs. Google Cloud Spanner vs. Neo4j

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

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines
NameDuckDB  Xexclude from comparisonGoogle Cloud Spanner  Xexclude from comparisonNeo4j  Xexclude from comparison
DescriptionAn embeddable, in-process, column-oriented SQL OLAP RDBMSA 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
Score7.44
Rank#44  Overall
#27  Relational DBMS
Score2.56
Rank#97  Overall
#50  Relational DBMS
Score47.91
Rank#20  Overall
#1  Graph DBMS
Websiteduckdb.orgcloud.google.com/­spannerneo4j.com
Technical documentationduckdb.org/­docscloud.google.com/­spanner/­docsneo4j.com/­docs
DeveloperGoogleNeo4j, Inc.
Initial release201820172007
Current release1.0.0, June 20245.23, August 2024
License infoCommercial or Open SourceOpen Source infoMIT LicensecommercialOpen 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 languageC++Java, Scala
Server operating systemsserver-lesshostedLinux 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 SQLyesyes infoQuery statements complying to ANSI 2011no
APIs and other access methodsArrow Database Connectivity (ADBC)
CLI Client
JDBC
ODBC
gRPC (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 languagesC
C# info3rd party driver
C++
Crystal info3rd party driver
Go info3rd party driver
Java
Lisp info3rd party driver
Python
R
Ruby info3rd party driver
Rust
Swift
Zig info3rd party driver
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python
.Net
Clojure
Elixir
Go
Groovy
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala
Server-side scripts infoStored proceduresnonoyes infoUser defined Procedures and Functions
Triggersnonoyes infovia event handler
Partitioning methods infoMethods for storing different data on different nodesnoneShardingyes using Neo4j Fabric
Replication methods infoMethods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodesnoneMulti-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 datayes, multi-version concurrency control (MVCC)yesyes
Durability infoSupport for making data persistentyesyesyes
In-memory capabilities infoIs there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.yesno
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
DuckDBGoogle Cloud SpannerNeo4j
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More resources
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Streamlining access to tabular datasets stored in Amazon S3 Tables with DuckDB | Amazon Web Services
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Analyzing JSON Data with DuckDB and SQL
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1 August 2024, TechTarget

Google Cloud Spanner gets dual-region configuration option
23 July 2024, InfoWorld

Google Cloud adds graph and vector search features to Spanner database
2 August 2024, techzine.eu

Google Releases Spanner Graph into General Availability
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