DBMS > Google Cloud Spanner vs. Informix vs. SAP HANA vs. Spark SQL

System Properties Comparison Google Cloud Spanner vs. Informix vs. SAP HANA vs. Spark SQL

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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.

A secure embeddable database from IBM, positioned besides IBM Db2 as a relatively low-cost product optimized for OLTP and Internet of Things data

In-memory, column based data store. Available as appliance or cloud service

Spark SQL is a component on top of 'Spark Core' for structured data processing

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Since Version 12.10 support for JSON/BSON datatypes compatible with MongoDB

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
Spatial DBMS
Time Series DBMS

with Informix TimeSeries Extension

Document store
Graph DBMS

with SAP Hana, Enterprise Edition
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	2.89
Rank	#103	Overall
	#52	Relational DBMS

Score	17.87
Rank	#35	Overall
	#22	Relational DBMS

Score	44.69
Rank	#22	Overall
	#16	Relational DBMS

Score	18.96
Rank	#33	Overall
	#20	Relational DBMS

Website

cloud.google.com/spanner

www.ibm.com/products/informix

www.sap.com/products/hana.html

spark.apache.org/sql

Technical documentation

cloud.google.com/spanner/docs

informix.hcldoc.com
www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SSGU8G/welcomeIfxServers.html

help.sap.com/hana

spark.apache.org/docs/latest/sql-programming-guide.html

Developer

Google

IBM, HCL Technologies

Effective May 1st, 2017, HCL took on development, technical support, and product management teams, and works jointly with IBM on product strategy, marketing, and sales.

SAP

Apache Software Foundation

Initial release

2017

1984

2010

2014

Current release

14.10.FC5, November 2020

2.0 SPS07 (April 4, 2023), April 2023

3.5.0 ( 2.13), September 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free developer edition available

commercial

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

also available as a cloud based service

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

Providers of DBaaS offerings, please contact us to be listed.

Implementation language

C, C++ and Java

Scala

Server operating systems

hosted

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
macOS
Solaris
Windows

Appliance or cloud-service

Linux
OS X
Windows

Data scheme

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

Since Version 12.10 support for JSON/BSON datatypes

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 DML and DDL statements

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
JSON API

MongoDB compatible
MQTT (Message Queue Telemetry Transport)
ODBC
RESTful HTTP API

JDBC
ODBC

Supported programming languages

Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

.Net
C
C++
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby

Java
Python
R
Scala

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

SQLScript, R

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

yes

yes, utilizing Spark Core

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

none

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.

yes

User concepts

Access control

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

Users with fine-grained authentication, authorization, and auditing controls

yes

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