DBMS > Google Cloud Spanner vs. KairosDB vs. TimescaleDB

System Properties Comparison Google Cloud Spanner vs. KairosDB vs. TimescaleDB

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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.

Distributed Time Series DBMS based on Cassandra or H2

A time series DBMS optimized for fast ingest and complex queries, based on PostgreSQL

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Time Series DBMS

Secondary database models

Relational DBMS

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

Score	2.56
Rank	#97	Overall
	#50	Relational DBMS

Score	0.56
Rank	#241	Overall
	#20	Time Series DBMS

Score	3.59
Rank	#72	Overall
	#5	Time Series DBMS

Website

cloud.google.com/spanner

github.com/kairosdb/kairosdb

www.timescale.com

Technical documentation

cloud.google.com/spanner/docs

kairosdb.github.io

docs.timescale.com

Developer

Google

Timescale

Initial release

2017

2013

2017

Current release

1.2.2, November 2018

2.15.0, May 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Apache 2.0

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.

Implementation language

Java

Server operating systems

hosted

Linux
OS X
Windows

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

numerics, strings, booleans, arrays, JSON blobs, geospatial dimensions, currencies, binary data, other complex data types

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.

yes

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

Query statements complying to ANSI 2011

yes

full PostgreSQL SQL syntax

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

Graphite protocol
HTTP REST
Telnet API

ADO.NET
JDBC
native C library
ODBC
streaming API for large objects

Supported programming languages

Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

Java
JavaScript

Node.js
PHP
Python

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java

JDBC
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

user defined functions, PL/pgSQL, PL/Tcl, PL/Perl, PL/Python, PL/Java, PL/PHP, PL/R, PL/Ruby, PL/Scheme, PL/Unix shell

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

based on Cassandra

yes, across time and space (hash partitioning) attributes

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication with 3 replicas for regional instances.

selectable replication factor

based on Cassandra

Source-replica replication with hot standby and reads on replicas

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

based on Cassandra
Immediate Consistency

based on Cassandra

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)

simple password-based access control

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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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 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

Fig. 4. Analytics dashboard to visualize and correlate historical data...
8 September 2018, ResearchGate

Real-Time Performance and Health Monitoring Using Netdata
2 September 2019, CNX Software

provided by Google News

Timescale Bolsters AI-Ready PostgreSQL with pgai Vectorizer
20 November 2024, infoq.com

Power IoT and time-series workloads with TimescaleDB for Azure Database for PostgreSQL
18 March 2019, Microsoft Azure

PostgreSQL is Now Faster than Pinecone, 75% Cheaper, with New Open Source Extensions
11 June 2024, PR Newswire

Timescale Valuation Rockets to Over $1B with $110M Round, Marking the Explosive Rise of Time-Series Data
22 February 2022, Business Wire

From Materialized Views to Continuous Aggregates: Enhancing PostgreSQL With Real-Time Analytics
3 November 2023, HackerNoon

provided by Google News

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