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DBMS > Google Cloud Spanner vs. H2 vs. Neo4j vs. RavenDB

System Properties Comparison Google Cloud Spanner vs. H2 vs. Neo4j vs. RavenDB

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines
NameGoogle Cloud Spanner  Xexclude from comparisonH2  Xexclude from comparisonNeo4j  Xexclude from comparisonRavenDB  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.Full-featured RDBMS with a small footprint, either embedded into a Java application or used as a database server.Scalable, ACID-compliant graph database designed with a high-performance distributed cluster architecture, available in self-hosted and cloud offeringsOpen Source Operational and Transactional Enterprise NoSQL Document Database
Primary database modelRelational DBMSRelational DBMSGraph DBMSDocument store
Secondary database modelsSpatial DBMSGraph DBMS
Spatial DBMS
Time Series DBMS
DB-Engines Ranking infomeasures the popularity of database management systemsranking trend
Trend Chart
Score2.89
Rank#105  Overall
#53  Relational DBMS
Score8.22
Rank#50  Overall
#32  Relational DBMS
Score44.47
Rank#23  Overall
#1  Graph DBMS
Score3.01
Rank#101  Overall
#17  Document stores
Websitecloud.google.com/­spannerwww.h2database.comneo4j.comravendb.net
Technical documentationcloud.google.com/­spanner/­docswww.h2database.com/­html/­main.htmlneo4j.com/­docsravendb.net/­docs
DeveloperGoogleThomas MuellerNeo4j, Inc.Hibernating Rhinos
Initial release2017200520072010
Current release2.2.220, July 20235.19, April 20245.4, July 2022
License infoCommercial or Open SourcecommercialOpen Source infodual-licence (Mozilla public license, Eclipse public license)Open Source infoGPL version3, commercial licenses availableOpen Source infoAGPL version 3, commercial license available
Cloud-based only infoOnly available as a cloud serviceyesnonono
DBaaS offerings (sponsored links) infoDatabase as a Service

Providers of DBaaS offerings, please contact us to be listed.
Neo4j Aura: Neo4j’s fully managed cloud service: The zero-admin, always-on graph database for cloud developers.
Implementation languageJavaJava, ScalaC#
Server operating systemshostedAll OS with a Java VMLinux infoCan also be used server-less as embedded Java database.
OS X
Solaris
Windows
Linux
macOS
Raspberry Pi
Windows
Data schemeyesyesschema-free and schema-optionalschema-free
Typing infopredefined data types such as float or dateyesyesyesno
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 indexesyesyesyes infopluggable indexing subsystem, by default Apache Luceneyes
SQL infoSupport of SQLyes infoQuery statements complying to ANSI 2011yesnoSQL-like query language (RQL)
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
JDBC
ODBC
Bolt protocol
Cypher query language
Java API
Neo4j-OGM infoObject Graph Mapper
RESTful HTTP API
Spring Data Neo4j
TinkerPop 3
.NET Client API
F# Client API
Go Client API
Java Client API
NodeJS Client API
PHP Client API
Python Client API
RESTful HTTP API
Supported programming languagesGo
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python
Java.Net
Clojure
Elixir
Go
Groovy
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala
.Net
C#
F#
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby
Server-side scripts infoStored proceduresnoJava Stored Procedures and User-Defined Functionsyes infoUser defined Procedures and Functionsyes
Triggersnoyesyes infovia event handleryes
Partitioning methods infoMethods for storing different data on different nodesShardingnoneyes using Neo4j FabricSharding
Replication methods infoMethods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodesMulti-source replication with 3 replicas for regional instances.With clustering: 2 database servers on different computers operate on identical copies of a databaseCausal Clustering using Raft protocol infoavailable in in Enterprise Version onlyMulti-source replication
MapReduce infoOffers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methodsyes infousing Google Cloud Dataflownonoyes
Consistency concepts infoMethods to ensure consistency in a distributed systemImmediate ConsistencyImmediate ConsistencyCausal and Eventual Consistency configurable in Causal Cluster setup
Immediate Consistency in stand-alone mode
Default ACID transactions on the local node (eventually consistent across the cluster). Atomic operations with cluster-wide ACID transactions. Eventual consistency for indexes and full-text search indexes.
Foreign keys infoReferential integrityyes infoby using interleaved tables, this features focuses more on performance improvements than on referential integrityyesyes infoRelationships in graphsno
Transaction concepts infoSupport to ensure data integrity after non-atomic manipulations of dataACID infoStrict serializable isolationACIDACIDACID, Cluster-wide transaction available
Concurrency infoSupport for concurrent manipulation of datayesyes, multi-version concurrency control (MVCC)yesyes
Durability infoSupport for making data persistentyesyesyesyes
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)fine grained access rights according to SQL-standardUsers, roles and permissions. Pluggable authentication with supported standards (LDAP, Active Directory, Kerberos)Authorization levels configured per client per database
More information provided by the system vendor
Google Cloud SpannerH2Neo4jRavenDB
Specific characteristicsNeo4j delivers graph technology that has been battle tested for performance and scale...
» more
Competitive advantagesNeo4j is the market leader, graph database category creator, and the most widely...
» more
Typical application scenariosReal-Time Recommendations Master Data Management Identity and Access Management Network...
» more
Key customersOver 800 commercial customers and over 4300 startups use Neo4j. Flagship customers...
» more
Market metricsNeo4j boasts the world's largest graph database ecosystem with more than 140 million...
» more
Licensing and pricing modelsGPL v3 license that can be used all the places where you might use MySQL. Neo4j Commercial...
» more
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