DBMS > Google Cloud Spanner vs. IBM Db2 vs. SurrealDB

System Properties Comparison Google Cloud Spanner vs. IBM Db2 vs. SurrealDB

Please select another system to include it in the comparison.

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

A fully ACID transactional, developer-friendly, multi-model DBMS

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

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

Document store
Graph DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
RDF store

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

with Db2 Spatial Extender

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

Score	2.56
Rank	#97	Overall
	#50	Relational DBMS

Score	126.40
Rank	#8	Overall
	#6	Relational DBMS

Score	1.08
Rank	#176	Overall
	#30	Document stores
	#16	Graph DBMS

Website

cloud.google.com/spanner

www.ibm.com/products/db2

surrealdb.com

Technical documentation

cloud.google.com/spanner/docs

www.ibm.com/docs/en/db2

surrealdb.com/docs

Developer

Google

IBM

SurrealDB Ltd

Initial release

2017

1983

host version

2022

Current release

12.1, October 2016

v1.5.0, May 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free version is available

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

C and C++

Rust

Server operating systems

hosted

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
Solaris
Windows
z/OS

Linux
macOS
Windows

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

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.

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

Query statements complying to ANSI 2011

yes

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

ADO.NET
JDBC
JSON style queries

MongoDB compatible
ODBC
XQuery

GraphQL
RESTful HTTP API
WebSocket

Supported programming languages

Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

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

Deno
Go
JavaScript (Node.js)
Rust

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

only with Windows/Unix/Linux Version

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)

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

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

yes, based on authentication and database rules

More information provided by the system vendor

We invite representatives of system vendors to contact us for updating and extending the system information,
and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.

Related products and services

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

More resources

Recent citations in the news

Google Cloud Introduces HDD Tier for Spanner Database, Cutting Cold Storage Costs by 80%
22 March 2025, infoq.com

New features make Google's Spanner a database for AI
1 August 2024, TechTarget

Google Cloud Spanner gets dual-region configuration option
23 July 2024, InfoWorld

Google Cloud adds graph and vector search features to Spanner database
2 August 2024, techzine.eu

Google Releases Spanner Graph into General Availability
19 February 2025, infoq.com

provided by Google News

Announcing Db2 Intelligence Center: AI-powered database management for the modern DBAs
5 May 2025, IBM

IBM Extends BYOC Deployment Model for Netezza and Db2 SaaS Across AWS and Azure
5 May 2025, ChannelE2E

IBM Db2 Modernizes With New AI-Powered Database Assistant
13 November 2024, Forbes

Authenticate Amazon RDS for Db2 instances using on-premises Microsoft Active Directory and Kerberos
16 December 2024, Amazon Web Services

PHP Database Programming with DB2
7 November 2024, SitePoint

provided by Google News

SurrealDB Launches Surreal Cloud, a Fully Managed Database Service That Tackles the Complexity Issues Faced by Developer Teams
7 December 2024, insideAI News

SurrealDB Empowers Developers to Build Applications with the Launch of SurrealDB University
15 October 2024, Business Wire

SurrealDB's Surreal Cloud debuts on AWS S3 for scalable multimodel database as a service
4 December 2024, SiliconANGLE

SurrealDB is helping developers consolidate their databases
18 June 2024, TechCrunch

London-based SurrealDB secures over €18.6 million aiming to disrupt database technology
18 June 2024, EU-Startups

provided by Google News

Share this page