DBMS > Google Cloud Spanner vs. HarperDB vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Pinecone

System Properties Comparison Google Cloud Spanner vs. HarperDB vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Pinecone

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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.

Ultra-low latency distributed database with an intuitive REST API supporting NoSQL and SQL (including joins). Deployment of functions and databases simultaneously with a consolidated node-level architecture.

Globally distributed, horizontally scalable, multi-model database service

A managed, cloud-native vector database

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Document store

Document store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store
Wide column store

Vector DBMS

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	0.55
Rank	#248	Overall
	#38	Document stores

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

Score	3.16
Rank	#95	Overall
	#2	Vector DBMS

Website

cloud.google.com/spanner

www.harperdb.io

azure.microsoft.com/services/cosmos-db

www.pinecone.io

Technical documentation

cloud.google.com/spanner/docs

docs.harperdb.io/docs

learn.microsoft.com/azure/cosmos-db

docs.pinecone.io/docs/overview

Developer

Google

HarperDB

Microsoft

Pinecone Systems, Inc

Initial release

2017

2014

2019

Current release

3.1, August 2021

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free community edition 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

Node.js

Server operating systems

hosted

Linux
OS X

hosted

Data scheme

yes

dynamic schema

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

JSON data types

yes

JSON types

String, Number, Boolean

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

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

Query statements complying to ANSI 2011

SQL-like data manipulation statements

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

JDBC
ODBC
React Hooks
RESTful HTTP/JSON API
WebSocket

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

RESTful HTTP API

Supported programming languages

Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

.Net
C
C#
C++
ColdFusion
D
Dart
Delphi
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Lisp
MatLab
Objective C
Perl
PHP
PowerShell
Prolog
Python
R
Ruby
Rust
Scala
Swift

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

Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

Custom Functions

since release 3.1

JavaScript

Triggers

JavaScript

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

A table resides as a whole on one (or more) nodes in a cluster

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication with 3 replicas for regional instances.

yes

the nodes on which a table resides can be defined

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

using Google Cloud Dataflow

with Hadoop integration

Integration with Hadoop/HDInsight on Azure*

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Bounded Staleness
Consistent Prefix
Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Consistency level configurable on request level
Session 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

Atomic execution of specific operations

Multi-item ACID transactions with snapshot isolation within a partition

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

yes, using LMDB

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)

Access rights for users and roles

Access rights can be defined down to the item level

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