DBMS > Google Cloud Spanner vs. H2 vs. PostgreSQL

System Properties Comparison Google Cloud Spanner vs. H2 vs. PostgreSQL

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

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.

Full-featured RDBMS with a small footprint, either embedded into a Java application or used as a database server.

Widely used open source RDBMS

Developed as objectoriented DBMS (Postgres), gradually enhanced with 'standards' like SQL

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

with object oriented extensions, e.g.: user defined types/functions and inheritance. Handling of key/value pairs with hstore module.

Secondary database models

Spatial DBMS

Document store
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	3.19
Rank	#95	Overall
	#50	Relational DBMS

Score	9.69
Rank	#48	Overall
	#30	Relational DBMS

Score	577.50
Rank	#4	Overall
	#4	Relational DBMS

Website

cloud.google.com/spanner

www.h2database.com

www.postgresql.org

Technical documentation

cloud.google.com/spanner/docs

www.h2database.com/html/main.html

www.postgresql.org/docs

Developer

Google

Thomas Mueller

PostgreSQL Global Development Group

www.postgresql.org/developer

Initial release

2017

2005

1989

1989: Postgres, 1996: PostgreSQL

Current release

1.4.200, October 2019

13.4, August 2021

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

dual-licence (Mozilla public license, Eclipse public license)

Open Source

BSD

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.

ScaleGrid for PostgreSQL: Fully managed PostgreSQL hosting on AWS, Azure and DigitalOcean with high availability and SSH access on the #1 multi-cloud DBaaS.

Implementation language

Java

Server operating systems

hosted

All OS with a Java VM

FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
NetBSD
OpenBSD
OS X
Solaris
Unix
Windows

Data scheme

yes

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

specific XML-type available, but no XML query functionality.

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

Query statements complying to ANSI 2011

yes

standard with numerous extensions

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

JDBC
ODBC

ADO.NET
JDBC
native C library
ODBC
streaming API for large objects

Supported programming languages

Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

Java

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java

JDBC
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
Tcl

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

Java Stored Procedures and User-Defined Functions

user defined functions

realized in proprietary language PL/pgSQL or with common languages like Perl, Python, Tcl etc.

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

none

partitioning by range, list and (since PostgreSQL 11) by hash

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication with 3 replicas for regional instances.

With clustering: 2 database servers on different computers operate on identical copies of a database

Source-replica replication

other methods possible by using 3rd party extensions

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

using Google Cloud Dataflow

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

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

ACID

Strict serializable isolation

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

yes, multi-version concurrency control (MVCC)

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

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)

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

More information provided by the system vendor

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and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.

Related products and services

3rd parties

pgDash: In-Depth PostgreSQL Monitoring.
» more

CYBERTEC is your professional partner for PostgreSQL services and Data Science since 2000. With offices in Austria, Uruguay, Estonia, Poland, South Africa and Switzerland, CYBERTEC operates worldwide and is here for you 24/7!
» more

ClusterControl: the only management system you’ll ever need to take control of your open source database infrastructure.
» more

Fivetran: Quickly and easily centralize your on-premise and cloud databases.
» more

SQLFlow: Provides a visual representation of the overall flow of data. Automated SQL data lineage analysis across Databases, ETL, Business Intelligence, Cloud and Hadoop environments by parsing SQL Script and stored procedure.
» more

Navicat for PostgreSQL is an easy-to-use graphical tool for PostgreSQL database development.
» more

EDB: Helping organizations get the most from PostgreSQL, Oracle Migration, High Availability, Security
» more

We invite representatives of vendors of related products to contact us for presenting information about their offerings here.

More resources

DB-Engines blog posts

The Inexorable Rise of PostgreSQL
24 September 2021, Matt Yonkovit, Percona (sponsor)

PostgreSQL is the DBMS of the Year 2020
4 January 2021, Paul Andlinger, Matthias Gelbmann

PostgreSQL is the DBMS of the Year 2018
2 January 2019, Paul Andlinger, Matthias Gelbmann

show all

Recent citations in the news

Google plays catch-up with JSON support for distributed RDBMS Spanner
8 September 2021, The Register

One on One with Google Cloud Product Director Irina Farooq
16 September 2021, Datanami

Google Cloud Opens New Canadian Cloud Region In Toronto
14 September 2021, CRN

Google Bolsters Cloud Spanner with Point-in-Time Recovery
6 April 2021, InfoQ.com

DataStax extends Astra DB serverless to go multiregion
15 September 2021, ZDNet

provided by Google News

Crunchy Data Delivers Trusted PostgreSQL Containers In Collaboration With The U.S. Department Of Defense
20 September 2021, Index-Journal

Oracle to PostgreSQL? 6 Reasons to Make Your Open Source Migration
16 September 2021, insideBIGDATA

Amazon Aurora Supports PostgreSQL 13
5 September 2021, InfoQ.com

Instaclustr Adds PostgreSQL to Managed Platform in Public Preview
14 September 2021, Yahoo Finance

Crunchy Data provides trusted PostgreSQL containers in partnership with DoD
21 September 2021, Geospatial World

provided by Google News

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