DBMS > Google Cloud Spanner vs. Ingres vs. PlanetScale

System Properties Comparison Google Cloud Spanner vs. Ingres vs. PlanetScale

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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.

Well established RDBMS

Scalable, distributed, serverless MySQL database platform built on top of Vitess

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	2.56
Rank	#97	Overall
	#50	Relational DBMS

Score	3.28
Rank	#78	Overall
	#42	Relational DBMS

Score	1.00
Rank	#180	Overall
	#80	Relational DBMS

Website

cloud.google.com/spanner

www.actian.com/databases/ingres

planetscale.com

Technical documentation

cloud.google.com/spanner/docs

docs.actian.com/ingres

planetscale.com/docs

Developer

Google

Actian Corporation

PlanetScale

Initial release

2017

1974

originally developed at University Berkely in early 1970s

2020

Current release

12.0, July 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

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

Server operating systems

hosted

AIX
HP Open VMS
HP-UX
Linux
Solaris
Windows

Docker
Linux
macOS

Data scheme

yes

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.

but tools for importing/exporting data from/to XML-files available

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

Query statements complying to ANSI 2011

yes

with proprietary extensions

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

.NET Client API
JDBC
ODBC
proprietary protocol (OpenAPI)

ADO.NET
JDBC
MySQL protocol
ODBC

Supported programming languages

Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
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

proprietary syntax

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

horizontal partitioning

Ingres Star to access multiple databases simultaneously

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication with 3 replicas for regional instances.

Ingres Replicator

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

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

Eventual Consistency across shards
Immediate Consistency within a shard

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

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

yes

not for MyISAM storage engine

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

Strict serializable isolation

ACID

ACID at shard level

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

MVCC

yes

table locks or row locks depending on storage engine

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)

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

no user groups or roles

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

Google Cloud expands its database portfolio with new AI capabilities
1 August 2024, TechCrunch

provided by Google News

Actian Launches Ingres 12.0 Database
4 June 2024, PR Newswire

Ingres vs Postgres MVCC Explained With Neo4j's LLM Knowledge Graph Builder
14 April 2025, i-programmer.info

Michael Stonebraker
30 March 2025, Britannica

Actian Launches Ingres as a Fully-Managed Cloud Service
24 September 2021, Integration Developer News

PostgreSQL now top developer choice ahead of MySQL, according to massive new survey
13 June 2023, devclass

provided by Google News

PlanetScale Vectors Now GA: MySQL's Missing Feature?
12 April 2025, infoq.com

From OnPrem to PlanetScale: How Sethu Neeli's AI Database
18 April 2025, openPR.com

PlanetScale ends free tier bid, sheds staff in profitability bid
11 March 2024, theregister.com

PlanetScale Announces $30M Series B Funding to Accelerate Adoption of Instantly Provisioned and Infinitely Scalable Database
23 June 2021, Business Wire

PlanetScale raises $50M Series C as its enterprise database service hits general availability
16 November 2021, TechCrunch

provided by Google News

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