DBMS > Google Cloud Spanner vs. HBase vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Realm

System Properties Comparison Google Cloud Spanner vs. HBase vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Realm

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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.

Wide-column store based on Apache Hadoop and on concepts of BigTable

Globally distributed, horizontally scalable, multi-model database service

A DBMS built for use on mobile devices that’s a fast, easy to use alternative to SQLite and Core Data

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Wide column store

Document store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store
Wide column store

Document store

Secondary database models

Spatial DBMS

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

Score	2.89
Rank	#103	Overall
	#52	Relational DBMS

Score	30.50
Rank	#26	Overall
	#2	Wide column stores

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

Score	7.60
Rank	#52	Overall
	#9	Document stores

Website

cloud.google.com/spanner

hbase.apache.org

azure.microsoft.com/services/cosmos-db

realm.io

Technical documentation

cloud.google.com/spanner/docs

hbase.apache.org/book.html

learn.microsoft.com/azure/cosmos-db

realm.io/docs

Developer

Google

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top-level project, originally developed by Powerset

Microsoft

Realm, acquired by MongoDB in May 2019

Initial release

2017

2008

2014

Current release

2.3.4, January 2021

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Apache version 2

commercial

Open Source

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

Java

Server operating systems

hosted

Linux
Unix
Windows

using Cygwin

hosted

Android
Backend: server-less
iOS
Windows

Data scheme

yes

schema-free, schema definition possible

schema-free

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

options to bring your own types, AVRO

yes

JSON types

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

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

Query statements complying to ANSI 2011

SQL-like query language

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

Java API
RESTful HTTP API
Thrift

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

Supported programming languages

Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

C
C#
C++
Groovy
Java
PHP
Python
Scala

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

.Net
Java

with Android only
Objective-C
React Native
Swift

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

Coprocessors in Java

JavaScript

runs within the applications so server-side scripts are unnecessary

Triggers

yes

JavaScript

yes

Change Listeners

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication with 3 replicas for regional instances.

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

none

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

using Google Cloud Dataflow

yes

with Hadoop integration

Integration with Hadoop/HDInsight on Azure*

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Immediate Consistency or Eventual Consistency

Bounded Staleness
Consistent Prefix
Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Consistency level configurable on request level
Session Consistency

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

by using interleaved tables, this features focuses more on performance improvements than on referential integrity

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

Strict serializable isolation

Single row ACID (across millions of columns)

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

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

In-Memory realm

User concepts

Access control

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

Access Control Lists (ACL) for RBAC, integration with Apache Ranger for RBAC & ABAC

Access rights can be defined down to the item level

yes

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