DBMS > FoundationDB vs. Google Cloud Spanner vs. Lovefield vs. SpaceTime

System Properties Comparison FoundationDB vs. Google Cloud Spanner vs. Lovefield vs. SpaceTime

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Created as commercial project in 2013, FoundationDB has been acquired by Apple in March 2015 and was withdrawn from the market. As a consequence, the product was removed from the DB-Engines ranking. In April 2018, Apple open-sourced FoundationDB and it therefore reappears in the ranking.

Description

Ordered key-value store. Core features are complimented by layers.

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.

Embeddable relational database for web apps written in pure JavaScript

SpaceTime is a spatio-temporal DBMS with a focus on performance.

Primary database model

Document store

supported via specific layer
Key-value store
Relational DBMS

supported via specific SQL-layer

Relational DBMS

Spatial DBMS

Secondary database models

Relational DBMS

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

Score	1.03
Rank	#190	Overall
	#31	Document stores
	#28	Key-value stores
	#89	Relational DBMS

Score	2.89
Rank	#103	Overall
	#52	Relational DBMS

Score	0.29
Rank	#293	Overall
	#133	Relational DBMS

Score	0.00
Rank	#383	Overall
	#7	Spatial DBMS

Website

github.com/apple/foundationdb

cloud.google.com/spanner

google.github.io/lovefield

www.mireo.com/spacetime

Technical documentation

apple.github.io/foundationdb

cloud.google.com/spanner/docs

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

Developer

FoundationDB

Google

Mireo

Initial release

2013

2017

2014

2020

Current release

6.2.28, November 2020

2.1.12, February 2017

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache 2.0

commercial

Open Source

Apache 2.0

commercial

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

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Implementation language

C++

JavaScript

C++

Server operating systems

Linux
OS X
Windows

hosted

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

tested with Chrome, Firefox, IE, Safari

Linux

Data scheme

schema-free

some layers support schemas

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

some layers support typing

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.

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

supported in specific SQL layer only

yes

Query statements complying to ANSI 2011

SQL-like query language

via JavaScript builder pattern

A subset of ANSI SQL is implemented

APIs and other access methods

gRPC (using protocol buffers) API
JDBC

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

RESTful HTTP API

Supported programming languages

.Net
C
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
PHP
Python
Ruby
Swift

Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

JavaScript

C#
C++
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

in SQL-layer only

Triggers

Using read-only observers

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

none

Fixed-grid hypercubes

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

Multi-source replication with 3 replicas for regional instances.

none

Real-time block device replication (DRBD)

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

Linearizable consistency

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

in SQL-layer only

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

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

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

yes

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

using MemoryDB

User concepts

Access control

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

yes

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More resources

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