DBMS > Google Cloud Bigtable vs. IBM Cloudant vs. IBM Db2 vs. MariaDB vs. Snowflake

System Properties Comparison Google Cloud Bigtable vs. IBM Cloudant vs. IBM Db2 vs. MariaDB vs. Snowflake

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Google's NoSQL Big Data database service. It's the same database that powers many core Google services, including Search, Analytics, Maps, and Gmail.

Database as a Service offering based on Apache CouchDB

Common in IBM host environments, 2 different versions for host and Windows/Linux

MySQL application compatible open source RDBMS, enhanced with high availability, security, interoperability and performance capabilities. MariaDB ColumnStore provides a column-oriented storage engine and MariaDB Xpand supports distributed SQL.

Cloud-based data warehousing service for structured and semi-structured data

Primary database model

Key-value store
Wide column store

Document store

Relational DBMS

Since Version 10.5 support for JSON/BSON documents compatible with MongoDB

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
RDF store

in Db2 LUW (Linux, Unix, Windows)
Spatial DBMS

with Db2 Spatial Extender

Document store
Graph DBMS

with OQGraph storage engine
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	3.26
Rank	#92	Overall
	#13	Key-value stores
	#8	Wide column stores

Score	2.68
Rank	#106	Overall
	#20	Document stores

Score	128.46
Rank	#8	Overall
	#5	Relational DBMS

Score	93.21
Rank	#13	Overall
	#9	Relational DBMS

Score	121.33
Rank	#9	Overall
	#6	Relational DBMS

Website

cloud.google.com/bigtable

www.ibm.com/products/cloudant

www.ibm.com/products/db2

mariadb.com

Site of MariaDB Corporation
mariadb.org

Site of MariaDB Foundation

www.snowflake.com

Technical documentation

cloud.google.com/bigtable/docs

cloud.ibm.com/docs/Cloudant

www.ibm.com/docs/en/db2

mariadb.com/kb/en/library

docs.snowflake.net/manuals/index.html

Developer

Google

IBM, Apache Software Foundation

IBM acquired Cloudant in February 2014

IBM

MariaDB Corporation Ab (MariaDB Enterprise),
MariaDB Foundation (community MariaDB Server)

The lead developer Monty Widenius is the original author of MySQL

Snowflake Computing Inc.

Initial release

2015

2010

1983

host version

2009

Fork of MySQL, which was first released in 1995

2014

Current release

12.1, October 2016

11.3.2, February 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free version is available

Open Source

GPL version 2, commercial enterprise subscription available

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

Erlang

C and C++

Server operating systems

hosted

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
Solaris
Windows
z/OS

FreeBSD
Linux
Solaris
Windows

ColumnStore storage engine not available on Windows

hosted

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

Dynamic columns are supported

yes

support of semi-structured data formats (JSON, XML, Avro)

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

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

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

with proprietary extensions

yes

APIs and other access methods

gRPC (using protocol buffers) API
HappyBase (Python library)
HBase compatible API (Java)

RESTful HTTP/JSON API

ADO.NET
JDBC
JSON style queries

MongoDB compatible
ODBC
XQuery

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary native API

CLI Client
JDBC
ODBC

Supported programming languages

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

C#
Java
JavaScript
Objective-C
PHP
Ruby

C
C#
C++
Cobol
Delphi
Fortran
Java
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Visual Basic

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

JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

View functions (Map-Reduce) in JavaScript

yes

PL/SQL compatibility added with version 10.3

user defined functions

Triggers

yes

similar concept for controling cloud resources

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

only with Windows/Unix/Linux Version

several options for horizontal partitioning and Sharding

yes

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Internal replication in Colossus, and regional replication between two clusters in different zones

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

yes

with separate tools (MQ, InfoSphere)

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

yes

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate consistency (for a single cluster), Eventual consistency (for two or more replicated clusters)

Eventual Consistency

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

not for MyISAM storage engine

yes

Transaction concepts

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

Atomic single-row operations

atomic operations within a document possible

ACID

not for MyISAM storage engine

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Optimistic locking

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

not for in-memory storage engine

yes

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

with MEMORY storage engine

User concepts

Access control

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

Access rights for users can be defined per database

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Users with fine-grained authorization concept, user roles and pluggable authentication

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

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Competitive advantages

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Typical application scenarios

Web, SaaS and Cloud operational applications that require high availability, scalability...
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Key customers

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Market metrics

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Licensing and pricing models

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