DBMS > Google BigQuery vs. Google Cloud Spanner vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Quasardb vs. TimesTen

System Properties Comparison Google BigQuery vs. Google Cloud Spanner vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Quasardb vs. TimesTen

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Large scale data warehouse service with append-only tables

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.

Globally distributed, horizontally scalable, multi-model database service

Distributed, high-performance timeseries database

In-Memory RDBMS compatible to Oracle

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store
Wide column store

Time Series DBMS

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Spatial DBMS

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

Score	60.38
Rank	#19	Overall
	#13	Relational DBMS

Score	2.89
Rank	#103	Overall
	#52	Relational DBMS

Score	29.04
Rank	#27	Overall
	#4	Document stores
	#2	Graph DBMS
	#3	Key-value stores
	#3	Wide column stores

Score	0.14
Rank	#332	Overall
	#29	Time Series DBMS

Score	1.31
Rank	#163	Overall
	#74	Relational DBMS

Website

cloud.google.com/bigquery

cloud.google.com/spanner

azure.microsoft.com/services/cosmos-db

quasar.ai

www.oracle.com/database/technologies/related/timesten.html

Technical documentation

cloud.google.com/bigquery/docs

cloud.google.com/spanner/docs

learn.microsoft.com/azure/cosmos-db

doc.quasar.ai/master

docs.oracle.com/database/timesten-18.1

Developer

Google

Microsoft

quasardb

Oracle, TimesTen Performance Software, HP

originally founded in HP Labs it was acquired by Oracle in 2005

Initial release

2010

2017

2014

2009

1998

Current release

3.14.1, January 2024

11 Release 2 (11.2.2.8.0)

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Free community edition, Non-profit organizations and non-commercial usage are eligible for free licenses

commercial

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++

Server operating systems

hosted

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
Solaris SPARC/x86
Windows

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

JSON types

yes

integer and binary

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

All properties auto-indexed by default

yes

with tags

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

Query statements complying to ANSI 2011

SQL-like query language

yes

APIs and other access methods

RESTful HTTP/JSON API

gRPC (using protocol buffers) API
JDBC

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

DocumentDB API
Graph API (Gremlin)
MongoDB API
RESTful HTTP API
Table API

HTTP API

JDBC
ODBC
ODP.NET
Oracle Call Interface (OCI)

Supported programming languages

.Net
Java
JavaScript
Objective-C
PHP
Python
Ruby

Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

.Net
C#
Java
JavaScript
JavaScript (Node.js)
MongoDB client drivers written for various programming languages
Python

.Net
C
C#
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
R

C
C++
Java
PL/SQL

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

user defined functions

in JavaScript

JavaScript

PL/SQL

Triggers

JavaScript

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

Sharding

consistent hashing

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication with 3 replicas for regional instances.

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

Source-replica replication with selectable replication factor

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

using Google Cloud Dataflow

with Hadoop integration

Integration with Hadoop/HDInsight on Azure*

with Hadoop integration

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Bounded Staleness
Consistent Prefix
Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Consistency level configurable on request level
Session Consistency

Immediate Consistency

Immediate Consistency or Eventual Consistency depending on configuration

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

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

Since BigQuery is designed for querying data

ACID

Strict serializable isolation

Multi-item ACID transactions with snapshot isolation within a partition

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

by using LevelDB

yes

by means of logfiles and checkpoints

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

Transient mode

yes

User concepts

Access control

Access privileges (owner, writer, reader) on dataset, table or view level

Google Cloud Identity & Access Management (IAM)

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

Access rights can be defined down to the item level

Cryptographically strong user authentication and audit trail

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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