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DBMS > Google Cloud Spanner vs. Graph Engine vs. Neo4j

System Properties Comparison Google Cloud Spanner vs. Graph Engine vs. Neo4j

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines
NameGoogle Cloud Spanner  Xexclude from comparisonGraph Engine infoformer name: Trinity  Xexclude from comparisonNeo4j  Xexclude from comparison
DescriptionA 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.A distributed in-memory data processing engine, underpinned by a strongly-typed RAM store and a general distributed computation engineScalable, ACID-compliant graph database designed with a high-performance distributed cluster architecture, available in self-hosted and cloud offerings
Primary database modelRelational DBMSGraph DBMS
Key-value store
Graph DBMS
DB-Engines Ranking infomeasures the popularity of database management systemsranking trend
Trend Chart
Score2.56
Rank#97  Overall
#50  Relational DBMS
Score0.58
Rank#239  Overall
#21  Graph DBMS
#34  Key-value stores
Score47.91
Rank#20  Overall
#1  Graph DBMS
Websitecloud.google.com/­spannerwww.graphengine.ioneo4j.com
Technical documentationcloud.google.com/­spanner/­docswww.graphengine.io/­docs/­manualneo4j.com/­docs
DeveloperGoogleMicrosoftNeo4j, Inc.
Initial release201720102007
Current release5.23, August 2024
License infoCommercial or Open SourcecommercialOpen Source infoMIT LicenseOpen Source infoGPL version3, commercial licenses available
Cloud-based only infoOnly available as a cloud serviceyesnono
DBaaS offerings (sponsored links) infoDatabase as a Service

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Implementation language.NET and CJava, Scala
Server operating systemshosted.NETLinux infoCan also be used server-less as embedded Java database.
OS X
Solaris
Windows
Data schemeyesyesschema-free and schema-optional
Typing infopredefined data types such as float or dateyesyesyes
XML support infoSome form of processing data in XML format, e.g. support for XML data structures, and/or support for XPath, XQuery or XSLT.nono
Secondary indexesyesyes infopluggable indexing subsystem, by default Apache Lucene
SQL infoSupport of SQLyes infoQuery statements complying to ANSI 2011nono
APIs and other access methodsgRPC (using protocol buffers) API
JDBC infoAt present, JDBC supports read-only queries. No support for DDL or DML statements.
RESTful HTTP API
RESTful HTTP APIBolt protocol
Cypher query language
Java API
Neo4j-OGM infoObject Graph Mapper
RESTful HTTP API
Spring Data Neo4j
TinkerPop 3
Supported programming languagesGo
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python
C#
C++
F#
Visual Basic
.Net
Clojure
Elixir
Go
Groovy
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala
Server-side scripts infoStored proceduresnoyesyes infoUser defined Procedures and Functions
Triggersnonoyes infovia event handler
Partitioning methods infoMethods for storing different data on different nodesShardinghorizontal partitioningyes using Neo4j Fabric
Replication methods infoMethods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodesMulti-source replication with 3 replicas for regional instances.Causal Clustering using Raft protocol infoavailable in in Enterprise Version only
MapReduce infoOffers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methodsyes infousing Google Cloud Dataflowno
Consistency concepts infoMethods to ensure consistency in a distributed systemImmediate ConsistencyCausal and Eventual Consistency configurable in Causal Cluster setup
Immediate Consistency in stand-alone mode
Foreign keys infoReferential integrityyes infoby using interleaved tables, this features focuses more on performance improvements than on referential integritynoyes infoRelationships in graphs
Transaction concepts infoSupport to ensure data integrity after non-atomic manipulations of dataACID infoStrict serializable isolationnoACID
Concurrency infoSupport for concurrent manipulation of datayesyesyes
Durability infoSupport for making data persistentyesoptional: either by committing a write-ahead log (WAL) to the local persistent storage or by dumping the memory to a persistent storageyes
In-memory capabilities infoIs there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.noyes
User concepts infoAccess controlAccess rights for users, groups and roles based on Google Cloud Identity and Access Management (IAM)Users, roles and permissions. Pluggable authentication with supported standards (LDAP, Active Directory, Kerberos)
More information provided by the system vendor
Google Cloud SpannerGraph Engine infoformer name: TrinityNeo4j
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More resources
Google Cloud SpannerGraph Engine infoformer name: TrinityNeo4j
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22 December 2015, Emil Eifrem (guest author)

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Recent citations in the news

Google Cloud Introduces HDD Tier for Spanner Database, Cutting Cold Storage Costs by 80%
22 March 2025, infoq.com

New features make Google's Spanner a database for AI
1 August 2024, TechTarget

Google Cloud Spanner gets dual-region configuration option
23 July 2024, InfoWorld

Google Cloud adds graph and vector search features to Spanner database
2 August 2024, techzine.eu

Google Releases Spanner Graph into General Availability
19 February 2025, infoq.com

provided by Google News

Trinity
30 October 2010, Microsoft

The graph analytics landscape 2019
27 February 2019, Data Science Central

IBM releases Graph, a service that can outperform SQL databases
27 July 2016, GeekWire

Microsoft Demos New Office 365 and SharePoint Online Collaboration Technologies
3 March 2014, Redmondmag.com

How Google and Microsoft taught search to “understand” the Web
6 June 2012, Ars Technica

provided by Google News

NASA jettisons Neo4j database for Memgraph citing costs
7 May 2025, theregister.com

Neo4j goes serverless, bringing graph analytics to any data source
7 May 2025, SiliconANGLE

Latest Neo4j release aims to simplify graph technology
7 May 2025, TechTarget

Neo4j Launches Industry's First Graph Analytics Offering For Any Data Platform
7 May 2025, PR Newswire

Android Studio Meerkat Feature Drop, Neo4j Aura Graph Analytics, and more software development news
7 May 2025, SD Times

provided by Google News



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