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

System Properties Comparison FoundationDB vs. Google Cloud Spanner vs. Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs. OpenSearch 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Created as commercial project in 2013, FoundationDB has been acquired by Apple in March 2015 and was withdrawn from the market.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

A distributed, RESTful search and analytics engine forked from Elasticsearch and based on Apache Lucene

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

Search engine

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

Vector DBMS

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	16.03
Rank	#37	Overall
	#4	Search engines

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

github.com/opensearch-project
opensearch.org

www.postgres-xl.org

Technical documentation

apple.github.io/foundationdb

cloud.google.com/spanner/docs

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

opensearch.org/docs/latest

www.postgres-xl.org/documentation

Developer

FoundationDB

Google

Microsoft

Amazon Web Services

Initial release

2013

2017

2010

2021

2014

since 2012, originally named StormDB

Current release

6.2.28, November 2020

V12

2.5.0, January 2023

10 R1, October 2018

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache 2.0

commercial

Open Source

Apache Version 2.0

Open Source

Mozilla public license

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.

Aiven for OpenSearch: Fully managed open source search and analytics suite. Out-of-the-box integrations get you up and running in a couple of clicks.
STACKIT OpenSearch offers OpenSearch in a managed version in enterprise grade, 100% GDPR-compliant, for a wide range of applications like analytics, website search, offering scalability and fast data access.

Implementation language

C++

Java

Server operating systems

Linux
OS X
Windows

hosted

All OS with a Java VM

Linux
macOS

Data scheme

schema-free

some layers support schemas

yes

schema-free

Flexible type definitions. Once a type is defined, it is persistent

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.

yes

XML type, but no XML query functionality

Secondary indexes

yes

All search fields are automatically indexed

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

supported in specific SQL layer only

yes

Query statements complying to ANSI 2011

yes

SQL-like query language

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

Java API
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

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

Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby

Elasticsearch client

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

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

in SQL-layer only

Transact SQL

yes

user defined functions

Triggers

yes

by using the 'percolation' feature

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

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

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

Linearizable consistency

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency

Synchronous doc based replication. Get by ID may show delays up to 1 sec. Configurable write consistency: one, quorum, all

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

MVCC

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

In-memory capabilities

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

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

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

OpenSearch is a highly scalable and extensible open-source software suite for search,...
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Competitive advantages

Distributed as fully open source under Apache License, Version 2.0 (ALv2), OpenSearch...
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Typical application scenarios

The OpenSearch platform is used across a broad range of search , analytics, and observability...
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Licensing and pricing models

The OpenSearch Project offers open source software licensed under Apache License...
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