DBMS > Google Cloud Spanner vs. IBM Db2 vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. TiDB

System Properties Comparison Google Cloud Spanner vs. IBM Db2 vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. TiDB

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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.

Common in IBM host environments, 2 different versions for host and Windows/Linux

Globally distributed, horizontally scalable, multi-model database service

TiDB is an open source distributed SQL database that supports Hybrid Transactional/Analytical Processing (HTAP) workloads. It is MySQL compatible and features horizontal scalability, strong consistency, and high availability.

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Since Version 10.5 support for JSON/BSON documents compatible with MongoDB

Document store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store
Wide column store

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
RDF store

in Db2 LUW (Linux, Unix, Windows)
Spatial DBMS

with Db2 Spatial Extender

Spatial DBMS

Document store

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

Score	2.89
Rank	#103	Overall
	#52	Relational DBMS

Score	128.46
Rank	#8	Overall
	#5	Relational DBMS

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

Score	4.66
Rank	#70	Overall
	#38	Relational DBMS

Website

cloud.google.com/spanner

www.ibm.com/products/db2

azure.microsoft.com/services/cosmos-db

pingcap.com

Technical documentation

cloud.google.com/spanner/docs

www.ibm.com/docs/en/db2

learn.microsoft.com/azure/cosmos-db

docs.pingcap.com/tidb/stable

Developer

Google

IBM

Microsoft

PingCAP, Inc.

Initial release

2017

1983

host version

2014

2016

Current release

12.1, October 2016

8.1.0, May 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free version is available

commercial

Open Source

Apache 2.0

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.

TiDB Cloud: Fully-managed TiDB Service. Bring everything great about TiDB to the cloud.

Implementation language

C and C++

Go, Rust

Server operating systems

hosted

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
Solaris
Windows
z/OS

hosted

Linux

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

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

yes

SQL-like query language

yes

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

ADO.NET
JDBC
JSON style queries

MongoDB compatible
ODBC
XQuery

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

GORM
JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary protocol
SQLAlchemy

Supported programming languages

Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

C
C#
C++
Cobol
Delphi
Fortran
Java
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Visual Basic

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

Ada
C
C#
C++
D
Delphi
Eiffel
Erlang
Haskell
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

JavaScript

Triggers

yes

JavaScript

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

only with Windows/Unix/Linux Version

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

horizontal partitioning (by key range)

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication with 3 replicas for regional instances.

yes

with separate tools (MQ, InfoSphere)

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

Using Raft consensus algorithm to ensure data replication with strong consistency among multiple replicas.

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

using Google Cloud Dataflow

with Hadoop integration

Integration with Hadoop/HDInsight on Azure*

yes

with TiSpark Connector

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

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

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

yes

full support since version 6.6

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

Strict serializable isolation

ACID

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.

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

Access rights can be defined down to the item level

Fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

TiDB is an advanced open-source, distributed SQL database for modern application...
» more

Competitive advantages

- HORIZONTAL SCALING : TiDB grants total transparency into your data workloads without...
» more

Typical application scenarios

TiDB is ideal for transactional applications that require extreme scalability and...
» more

Key customers

Block, Pinterest, Catalyst, Bolt, Flipkart, Capcom, Shopee (E-commerce), JD Cloud...
» more

Market metrics

34K+ GitHub stars 5K+ members in TiDB Community Slack 1K+ community contributors...
» more

Licensing and pricing models

TiDB Community : Free open source software (Apache 2.0) TiDB Self-Hosted : Enterprise...
» more

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