DBMS > FoundationDB vs. Google Cloud Spanner vs. Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs. MongoDB vs. Postgres-XL

System Properties Comparison FoundationDB vs. Google Cloud Spanner vs. Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs. MongoDB vs. Postgres-XL

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Created as commercial project in 2013, FoundationDB has been acquired by Apple in March 2015 and was withdrawn from the market.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.

Database as a Service offering with high compatibility to Microsoft SQL Server

One of the most popular document stores available both as a fully managed cloud service and for deployment on self-managed infrastructure

Based on PostgreSQL enhanced with MPP and write-scale-out cluster features

Primary database model

Document store

supported via specific layer
Key-value store
Relational DBMS

supported via specific SQL-layer

Relational DBMS

Document store

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

Spatial DBMS
Search engine

integrated Lucene index, currently in MongoDB Atlas only.
Time Series DBMS

Time Series Collections introduced in Release 5.0
Vector DBMS

currently available in the MongoDB Atlas cloud service only

Document store
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	1.06
Rank	#185	Overall
	#31	Document stores
	#28	Key-value stores
	#85	Relational DBMS

Score	2.84
Rank	#100	Overall
	#51	Relational DBMS

Score	76.78
Rank	#16	Overall
	#11	Relational DBMS

Score	421.08
Rank	#5	Overall
	#1	Document stores

Score	0.53
Rank	#254	Overall
	#117	Relational DBMS

Website

github.com/apple/foundationdb

cloud.google.com/spanner

azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/azure-sql/database

www.mongodb.com

www.postgres-xl.org

Technical documentation

apple.github.io/foundationdb

cloud.google.com/spanner/docs

docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-sql

www.mongodb.com/docs/manual

www.postgres-xl.org/documentation

Developer

FoundationDB

Google

Microsoft

MongoDB, Inc

Initial release

2013

2017

2010

2009

2014

since 2012, originally named StormDB

Current release

6.2.28, November 2020

V12

6.0.7, June 2023

10 R1, October 2018

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache 2.0

commercial

Open Source

MongoDB Inc.'s Server Side Public License v1. Prior versions were published under GNU AGPL v3.0. Commercial licenses are also available.

Open Source

Mozilla public license

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

MongoDB available as DBaaS (MongoDB Atlas)

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

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Implementation language

C++

Server operating systems

Linux
OS X
Windows

hosted

Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Linux
macOS

Data scheme

schema-free

some layers support schemas

yes

schema-free

Although schema-free, documents of the same collection often follow the same structure. Optionally impose all or part of a schema by defining a JSON schema.

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

some layers support typing

yes

string, integer, double, decimal, boolean, date, object_id, geospatial

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

XML type, but no XML query functionality

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

supported in specific SQL layer only

yes

Query statements complying to ANSI 2011

yes

Read-only SQL queries via the MongoDB Atlas SQL Interface

yes

distributed, parallel query execution

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

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC

GraphQL
HTTP REST
Prisma
proprietary protocol using JSON

ADO.NET
JDBC
native C library
ODBC
streaming API for large objects

Supported programming languages

.Net
C
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
PHP
Python
Ruby
Swift

Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

.Net
C#
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby

Actionscript

unofficial driver
C
C#
C++
Clojure

unofficial driver
ColdFusion

unofficial driver
D

unofficial driver
Dart

unofficial driver
Delphi

unofficial driver
Erlang
Go
Groovy

unofficial driver
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Kotlin
Lisp

unofficial driver
Lua

unofficial driver
MatLab

unofficial driver
Perl
PHP
PowerShell

unofficial driver
Prolog

unofficial driver
Python
R

unofficial driver
Ruby
Rust
Scala
Smalltalk

unofficial driver
Swift

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Erlang
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
Tcl

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

in SQL-layer only

Transact SQL

JavaScript

user defined functions

Triggers

yes

in MongoDB Atlas only

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

Partitioned by hashed, ranged, or zoned sharding keys. Live resharding allows users to change their shard keys as an online operation with zero downtime.

horizontal partitioning

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

Multi-source replication with 3 replicas for regional instances.

yes, with always 3 replicas available

Multi-Source deployments with MongoDB Atlas Global Clusters
Source-replica replication

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

using Google Cloud Dataflow

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Linearizable consistency

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency

can be individually decided for each read operation
Immediate Consistency

default behaviour

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

typically not used, however similar functionality with DBRef possible

yes

Transaction concepts

Support to ensure data integrity after non-atomic manipulations of data

ACID

Strict serializable isolation

ACID

Multi-document ACID Transactions with snapshot isolation

ACID

MVCC

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

optional, enabled by default

yes

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

In-memory storage engine introduced with MongoDB version 3.2

User concepts

Access control

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

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Access rights for users and roles

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

MongoDB provides an integrated suite of cloud database and data services to accelerate...
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Competitive advantages

Built around the flexible document data model and unified API, MongoDB is a developer...
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Typical application scenarios

AI-enriched intelligent apps (Continental, Telefonica, Iron Mountain) Internet of...
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Key customers

ADP, Adobe, Amadeus, AstraZeneca, Auto Trader, Barclays, BBVA, Bosch, Cisco, CERN,...
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Market metrics

Hundreds of millions downloads, over 150,000+ Atlas clusters provisioned every month...
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Licensing and pricing models

MongoDB database server: Server-Side Public License (SSPL) . Commercial licenses...
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