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DBMS > Google Cloud Spanner vs. Heroic vs. MarkLogic vs. Neo4j

System Properties Comparison Google Cloud Spanner vs. Heroic vs. MarkLogic vs. Neo4j

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines
NameGoogle Cloud Spanner  Xexclude from comparisonHeroic  Xexclude from comparisonMarkLogic  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.Time Series DBMS built at Spotify based on Cassandra or Google Cloud Bigtable, and ElasticSearchOperational and transactional Enterprise NoSQL databaseScalable, ACID-compliant graph database designed with a high-performance distributed cluster architecture, available in self-hosted and cloud offerings
Primary database modelRelational DBMSTime Series DBMSDocument store
Native XML DBMS
RDF store infoas of version 7
Search engine
Graph DBMS
DB-Engines Ranking infomeasures the popularity of database management systemsranking trend
Trend Chart
Score2.56
Rank#97  Overall
#50  Relational DBMS
Score0.02
Rank#367  Overall
#39  Time Series DBMS
Score4.24
Rank#64  Overall
#11  Document stores
#1  Native XML DBMS
#1  RDF stores
#8  Search engines
Score47.91
Rank#20  Overall
#1  Graph DBMS
Websitecloud.google.com/­spannergithub.com/­spotify/­heroicwww.progress.com/­marklogicneo4j.com
Technical documentationcloud.google.com/­spanner/­docsspotify.github.io/­heroicwww.progress.com/­marklogic/­documentationneo4j.com/­docs
DeveloperGoogleSpotifyMarkLogic Corp.Neo4j, Inc.
Initial release2017201420012007
Current release11.0, December 20225.23, August 2024
License infoCommercial or Open SourcecommercialOpen Source infoApache 2.0commercial inforestricted free version is availableOpen Source infoGPL version3, commercial licenses available
Cloud-based only infoOnly available as a cloud serviceyesnonono
DBaaS offerings (sponsored links) infoDatabase as a Service

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Implementation languageJavaC++Java, Scala
Server operating systemshostedLinux
OS X
Windows
Linux infoCan also be used server-less as embedded Java database.
OS X
Solaris
Windows
Data schemeyesschema-freeschema-free infoSchema can be enforcedschema-free and schema-optional
Typing infopredefined data types such as float or dateyesyesyesyes
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.nonoyes
Secondary indexesyesyes infovia Elasticsearchyesyes infopluggable indexing subsystem, by default Apache Lucene
SQL infoSupport of SQLyes infoQuery statements complying to ANSI 2011noyes infoSQL92no
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
HQL (Heroic Query Language, a JSON-based language)
HTTP API
Java API
Node.js Client API
ODBC
proprietary Optic API infoProprietary Query API, introduced with version 9
RESTful HTTP API
SPARQL
WebDAV
XDBC
XQuery
XSLT
Bolt 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#
C++
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
.Net
Clojure
Elixir
Go
Groovy
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala
Server-side scripts infoStored proceduresnonoyes infovia XQuery or JavaScriptyes infoUser defined Procedures and Functions
Triggersnonoyesyes infovia event handler
Partitioning methods infoMethods for storing different data on different nodesShardingShardingShardingyes using Neo4j Fabric
Replication methods infoMethods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodesMulti-source replication with 3 replicas for regional instances.yesyesCausal Clustering using Raft protocol infoavailable in in Enterprise Version only
MapReduce infoOffers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methodsyes infousing Google Cloud Dataflownoyes infovia Hadoop Connector, HDFS Direct Access and in-database MapReduce jobsno
Consistency concepts infoMethods to ensure consistency in a distributed systemImmediate ConsistencyEventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency
Immediate 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 integritynonoyes infoRelationships in graphs
Transaction concepts infoSupport to ensure data integrity after non-atomic manipulations of dataACID infoStrict serializable isolationnoACID infocan act as a resource manager in an XA/JTA transactionACID
Concurrency infoSupport for concurrent manipulation of datayesyesyesyes
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.nonoyes, with Range Indexes
User concepts infoAccess controlAccess rights for users, groups and roles based on Google Cloud Identity and Access Management (IAM)Role-based access control at the document and subdocument levelsUsers, roles and permissions. Pluggable authentication with supported standards (LDAP, Active Directory, Kerberos)
More information provided by the system vendor
Google Cloud SpannerHeroicMarkLogicNeo4j
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More resources
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22 March 2025, infoq.com

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