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DBMS > Elasticsearch vs. Google Cloud Spanner vs. Sphinx vs. VoltDB

System Properties Comparison Elasticsearch vs. Google Cloud Spanner vs. Sphinx vs. VoltDB

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines
NameElasticsearch  Xexclude from comparisonGoogle Cloud Spanner  Xexclude from comparisonSphinx  Xexclude from comparisonVoltDB  Xexclude from comparison
DescriptionA distributed, RESTful modern search and analytics engine based on Apache Lucene infoElasticsearch lets you perform and combine many types of searches such as structured, unstructured, geo, and metricA 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.Open source search engine for searching in data from different sources, e.g. relational databasesDistributed In-Memory NewSQL RDBMS infoUsed for OLTP applications with a high frequency of relatively simple transactions, that can hold all their data in memory
Primary database modelSearch engineRelational DBMSSearch engineRelational DBMS
Secondary database modelsDocument store
Spatial DBMS
Vector DBMS
DB-Engines Ranking infomeasures the popularity of database management systemsranking trend
Trend Chart
Score132.83
Rank#7  Overall
#1  Search engines
Score2.84
Rank#100  Overall
#51  Relational DBMS
Score5.95
Rank#55  Overall
#5  Search engines
Score1.47
Rank#157  Overall
#73  Relational DBMS
Websitewww.elastic.co/­elasticsearchcloud.google.com/­spannersphinxsearch.comwww.voltdb.com
Technical documentationwww.elastic.co/­guide/­en/­elasticsearch/­reference/­current/­index.htmlcloud.google.com/­spanner/­docssphinxsearch.com/­docsdocs.voltdb.com
DeveloperElasticGoogleSphinx Technologies Inc.VoltDB Inc.
Initial release2010201720012010
Current release8.6, January 20233.5.1, February 202311.3, April 2022
License infoCommercial or Open SourceOpen Source infoElastic LicensecommercialOpen Source infoGPL version 2, commercial licence availableOpen Source infoAGPL for Community Edition, commercial license for Enterprise, AWS, and Pro Editions
Cloud-based only infoOnly available as a cloud servicenoyesnono
DBaaS offerings (sponsored links) infoDatabase as a Service

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Implementation languageJavaC++Java, C++
Server operating systemsAll OS with a Java VMhostedFreeBSD
Linux
NetBSD
OS X
Solaris
Windows
Linux
OS X infofor development
Data schemeschema-free infoFlexible type definitions. Once a type is defined, it is persistentyesyesyes
Typing infopredefined data types such as float or dateyesyesnoyes
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 indexesyes infoAll search fields are automatically indexedyesyes infofull-text index on all search fieldsyes
SQL infoSupport of SQLSQL-like query languageyes infoQuery statements complying to ANSI 2011SQL-like query language (SphinxQL)yes infoonly a subset of SQL 99
APIs and other access methodsJava API
RESTful HTTP/JSON API
gRPC (using protocol buffers) API
JDBC infoAt present, JDBC supports read-only queries. No support for DDL or DML statements.
RESTful HTTP API
Proprietary protocolJava API
JDBC
RESTful HTTP/JSON API
Supported programming languages.Net
Groovy
Community Contributed Clients
Java
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python
C++ infounofficial client library
Java
Perl infounofficial client library
PHP
Python
Ruby infounofficial client library
C#
C++
Erlang infonot officially supported
Go
Java
JavaScript infoNode.js
PHP
Python
Server-side scripts infoStored proceduresyesnonoJava
Triggersyes infoby using the 'percolation' featurenonono
Partitioning methods infoMethods for storing different data on different nodesShardingShardingSharding infoPartitioning is done manually, search queries against distributed index is supportedSharding
Replication methods infoMethods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodesyesMulti-source replication with 3 replicas for regional instances.noneMulti-source replication
Source-replica replication
MapReduce infoOffers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methodsES-Hadoop Connectoryes infousing Google Cloud Dataflownono
Consistency concepts infoMethods to ensure consistency in a distributed systemEventual Consistency infoSynchronous doc based replication. Get by ID may show delays up to 1 sec. Configurable write consistency: one, quorum, allImmediate Consistency
Foreign keys infoReferential integritynoyes infoby using interleaved tables, this features focuses more on performance improvements than on referential integritynono infoFOREIGN KEY constraints are not supported
Transaction concepts infoSupport to ensure data integrity after non-atomic manipulations of datanoACID infoStrict serializable isolationnoACID infoTransactions are executed single-threaded within stored procedures
Concurrency infoSupport for concurrent manipulation of datayesyesyesyes infoData access is serialized by the server
Durability infoSupport for making data persistentyesyesyes infoThe original contents of fields are not stored in the Sphinx index.yes infoSnapshots and command logging
In-memory capabilities infoIs there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.Memcached and Redis integrationno
User concepts infoAccess controlAccess rights for users, groups and roles based on Google Cloud Identity and Access Management (IAM)noUsers and roles with access to stored procedures

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ElasticsearchGoogle Cloud SpannerSphinxVoltDB
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