DBMS > Google Cloud Spanner vs. Kdb vs. MaxDB vs. Snowflake

System Properties Comparison Google Cloud Spanner vs. Kdb vs. MaxDB vs. Snowflake

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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.

High performance Time Series DBMS

A robust and reliable RDBMS optimized to run all major SAP solutions

Cloud-based data warehousing service for structured and semi-structured data

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Time Series DBMS
Vector DBMS

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Relational DBMS

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

Score	2.89
Rank	#103	Overall
	#52	Relational DBMS

Score	7.55
Rank	#53	Overall
	#3	Time Series DBMS
	#1	Vector DBMS

Score	2.32
Rank	#112	Overall
	#55	Relational DBMS

Score	121.33
Rank	#9	Overall
	#6	Relational DBMS

Website

cloud.google.com/spanner

kx.com

maxdb.sap.com

www.snowflake.com

Technical documentation

cloud.google.com/spanner/docs

code.kx.com

maxdb.sap.com/documentation

docs.snowflake.net/manuals/index.html

Developer

Google

Kx Systems, a division of First Derivatives plc

SAP, acquired from Software AG (Adabas-D) in 1997

Snowflake Computing Inc.

Initial release

2017

2000

kdb was released 2000, kdb+ in 2003

1984

2014

Current release

3.6, May 2018

7.9.10.12, February 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free 32-bit version

commercial

Limited community edition free

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

C++

Server operating systems

hosted

Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
Solaris
Windows

hosted

Data scheme

yes

support of semi-structured data formats (JSON, XML, Avro)

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.

yes

Secondary indexes

yes

table attribute 'grouped'

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

Query statements complying to ANSI 2011

SQL-like query language (q)

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

HTTP API
JDBC
Jupyter
Kafka
ODBC
WebSocket

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
WebDAV

CLI Client
JDBC
ODBC

Supported programming languages

Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

C
C#
C++
Go
J
Java
JavaScript
Lua
MatLab
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Scala

.Net
C#
Java
Perl
PHP
Python

JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

user defined functions

yes

user defined functions

Triggers

yes

with views

yes

similar concept for controling cloud resources

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

horizontal partitioning

none

yes

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication with 3 replicas for regional instances.

Source-replica replication

yes

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

using Google Cloud Dataflow

similar paradigm used for internal processing

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)

rights management via user accounts

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Users with fine-grained authorization concept, user roles and pluggable authentication

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Integrated columnar database & programming system for streaming, real time and historical...
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Competitive advantages

provides seamless scalability; runs on industry standard server platforms; is top-ranked...
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Typical application scenarios

tick database streaming sensor data massive intelligence applications oil and gas...
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Key customers

Goldman Sachs Morgan Stanley Merrill Lynch J.P. Morgan Deutsche Bank IEX Securities...
» more

Market metrics

kdb+ performance and reliability proven by our customers in critical infrastructure...
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Licensing and pricing models

upon request
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and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.