DBMS > FoundationDB vs. Google Cloud Spanner vs. MySQL vs. NCache vs. Sphinx

System Properties Comparison FoundationDB vs. Google Cloud Spanner vs. MySQL vs. NCache vs. Sphinx

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Created as commercial project in 2013, FoundationDB has been acquired by Apple in March 2015 and was withdrawn from the market.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

Widely used open source RDBMS

Open-Source and Enterprise in-memory Key-Value Store

Open source search engine for searching in data from different sources, e.g. relational databases

Primary database model

Document store

supported via specific layer
Key-value store
Relational DBMS

supported via specific SQL-layer

Relational DBMS

Key/Value like access via memcached API

Key-value store

Search engine

Secondary database models

Document store
Spatial DBMS

Document store
Search engine

Using distributed Lucene

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

Score	0.97
Rank	#191	Overall
	#32	Document stores
	#28	Key-value stores
	#87	Relational DBMS

Score	2.69
Rank	#101	Overall
	#51	Relational DBMS

Score	1029.49
Rank	#2	Overall
	#2	Relational DBMS

Score	0.91
Rank	#196	Overall
	#29	Key-value stores

Score	5.97
Rank	#56	Overall
	#5	Search engines

Website

github.com/apple/foundationdb

cloud.google.com/spanner

www.mysql.com

www.alachisoft.com/ncache

sphinxsearch.com

Technical documentation

apple.github.io/foundationdb

cloud.google.com/spanner/docs

dev.mysql.com/doc

www.alachisoft.com/resources/docs

sphinxsearch.com/docs

Developer

FoundationDB

Google

Oracle

since 2010, originally MySQL AB, then Sun

Alachisoft

Sphinx Technologies Inc.

Initial release

2013

2017

1995

2005

2001

Current release

6.2.28, November 2020

9.0.0, July 2024

5.3.3, April 2024

3.5.1, February 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache 2.0

commercial

Open Source

GPL version 2. Commercial licenses with extended functionallity are available

Open Source

Enterprise Edition available

Open Source

GPL version 2, commercial licence available

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.

Implementation language

C++

C and C++

C#, .NET, .NET Core, Java

C++

Server operating systems

Linux
OS X
Windows

hosted

FreeBSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Linux
Windows

FreeBSD
Linux
NetBSD
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

some layers support schemas

yes

schema-free

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

some layers support typing

yes

partial

Supported data types are Lists, Queues, Hashsets, Dictionary and Counter

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

Secondary indexes

yes

full-text index on all search fields

SQL

Support of SQL

supported in specific SQL layer only

yes

Query statements complying to ANSI 2011

yes

with proprietary extensions

SQL-like query syntax and LINQ for searching the cache. Cache Synchronization with SQL Server using SQL dependency.

SQL-like query language (SphinxQL)

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
Proprietary native API

IDistributedCache
JCache
LINQ
Proprietary native API

Proprietary protocol

Supported programming languages

.Net
C
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
PHP
Python
Ruby
Swift

Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

Ada
C
C#
C++
D
Delphi
Eiffel
Erlang
Haskell
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl

.Net
.Net Core
C#
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python
Scala

C++

unofficial client library
Java
Perl

unofficial client library
PHP
Python
Ruby

unofficial client library

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

in SQL-layer only

yes

proprietary syntax

support for stored procedures with SQL-Server CLR

Triggers

yes

Notifications

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

horizontal partitioning, sharding with MySQL Cluster or MySQL Fabric

yes

Sharding

Partitioning is done manually, search queries against distributed index is supported

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

Multi-source replication with 3 replicas for regional instances.

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

yes, with selectable consistency level

none

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
Immediate Consistency
Strong Eventual Consistency over WAN with Conflict Resolution using Bridge Topology

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

not for MyISAM storage engine

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

Strict serializable isolation

ACID

not for MyISAM storage engine

optimistic locking and pessimistic locking

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

table locks or row locks depending on storage engine

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

The original contents of fields are not stored in the Sphinx index.

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

User concepts

Access control

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

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

no user groups or roles

Authentication to access the cache via Active Directory/LDAP (possible roles: user, administrator)

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

NCache has been the market leader in .NET Distributed Caching since 2005 . NCache...
» more

Competitive advantages

NCache is 100% .NET/ .NET Core based which fully supports ASP.NET Core Sessions ,...
» more

Typical application scenarios

NCache enables industries like retail, finance, banking IoT, travel, ecommerce, healthcare...
» more

Key customers

Bank of America, Citi, Natures Way, Charter Spectrum, Barclays, Henry Schein, GBM,...
» more

Market metrics

Market Leader in .NET Distributed Caching since 2005.
» more

Licensing and pricing models

NCache Open Source is free on an as-is basis without any support. NCache Enterprise...
» more

We invite representatives of system vendors to contact us for updating and extending the system information,
and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.