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DBMS > Google Cloud Spanner vs. Kinetica vs. Neo4j vs. TerarkDB

System Properties Comparison Google Cloud Spanner vs. Kinetica vs. Neo4j vs. TerarkDB

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines
NameGoogle Cloud Spanner  Xexclude from comparisonKinetica  Xexclude from comparisonNeo4j  Xexclude from comparisonTerarkDB  Xexclude from comparison
DescriptionA 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.Fully vectorized database across both GPUs and CPUsScalable, ACID-compliant graph database designed with a high-performance distributed cluster architecture, available in self-hosted and cloud offeringsA key-value store forked from RocksDB with advanced compression algorithms. It can be used standalone or as a storage engine for MySQL and MongoDB
Primary database modelRelational DBMSRelational DBMSGraph DBMSKey-value store
Secondary database modelsSpatial DBMS
Time Series DBMS
DB-Engines Ranking infomeasures the popularity of database management systemsranking trend
Trend Chart
Score2.84
Rank#100  Overall
#51  Relational DBMS
Score0.66
Rank#234  Overall
#107  Relational DBMS
Score44.89
Rank#21  Overall
#1  Graph DBMS
Score0.08
Rank#367  Overall
#56  Key-value stores
Websitecloud.google.com/­spannerwww.kinetica.comneo4j.comgithub.com/­bytedance/­terarkdb
Technical documentationcloud.google.com/­spanner/­docsdocs.kinetica.comneo4j.com/­docsbytedance.larkoffice.com/­docs/­doccnZmYFqHBm06BbvYgjsHHcKc
DeveloperGoogleKineticaNeo4j, Inc.ByteDance, originally Terark
Initial release2017201220072016
Current release7.1, August 20215.20, May 2024
License infoCommercial or Open SourcecommercialcommercialOpen Source infoGPL version3, commercial licenses availablecommercial inforestricted open source version available
Cloud-based only infoOnly available as a cloud serviceyesnonono
DBaaS offerings (sponsored links) infoDatabase as a Service

Providers of DBaaS offerings, please contact us to be listed.
Neo4j Aura: Neo4j’s fully managed cloud service: The zero-admin, always-on graph database for cloud developers.
Implementation languageC, C++Java, ScalaC++
Server operating systemshostedLinuxLinux infoCan also be used server-less as embedded Java database.
OS X
Solaris
Windows
Data schemeyesyesschema-free and schema-optionalschema-free
Typing infopredefined data types such as float or dateyesyesyesno
XML support infoSome form of processing data in XML format, e.g. support for XML data structures, and/or support for XPath, XQuery or XSLT.nonono
Secondary indexesyesyesyes infopluggable indexing subsystem, by default Apache Luceneno
SQL infoSupport of SQLyes infoQuery statements complying to ANSI 2011SQL-like DML and DDL statementsnono
APIs and other access methodsgRPC (using protocol buffers) API
JDBC infoAt present, JDBC supports read-only queries. No support for DDL or DML statements.
RESTful HTTP API
JDBC
ODBC
RESTful HTTP API
Bolt protocol
Cypher query language
Java API
Neo4j-OGM infoObject Graph Mapper
RESTful HTTP API
Spring Data Neo4j
TinkerPop 3
C++ API
Java API
Supported programming languagesGo
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python
C++
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python
.Net
Clojure
Elixir
Go
Groovy
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala
C++
Java
Server-side scripts infoStored proceduresnouser defined functionsyes infoUser defined Procedures and Functionsno
Triggersnoyes infotriggers when inserted values for one or more columns fall within a specified rangeyes infovia event handlerno
Partitioning methods infoMethods for storing different data on different nodesShardingShardingyes using Neo4j Fabricnone
Replication methods infoMethods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodesMulti-source replication with 3 replicas for regional instances.Source-replica replicationCausal Clustering using Raft protocol infoavailable in in Enterprise Version onlynone
MapReduce infoOffers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methodsyes infousing Google Cloud Dataflownonono
Consistency concepts infoMethods to ensure consistency in a distributed systemImmediate ConsistencyImmediate Consistency or Eventual Consistency depending on configurationCausal and Eventual Consistency configurable in Causal Cluster setup
Immediate Consistency in stand-alone mode
Foreign keys infoReferential integrityyes infoby using interleaved tables, this features focuses more on performance improvements than on referential integrityyesyes infoRelationships in graphsno
Transaction concepts infoSupport to ensure data integrity after non-atomic manipulations of dataACID infoStrict serializable isolationnoACIDno
Concurrency infoSupport for concurrent manipulation of datayesyesyesyes
Durability infoSupport for making data persistentyesyesyesyes
In-memory capabilities infoIs there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.noyes infoGPU vRAM or System RAMyes
User concepts infoAccess controlAccess rights for users, groups and roles based on Google Cloud Identity and Access Management (IAM)Access rights for users and roles on table levelUsers, roles and permissions. Pluggable authentication with supported standards (LDAP, Active Directory, Kerberos)no
More information provided by the system vendor
Google Cloud SpannerKineticaNeo4jTerarkDB
Specific characteristicsNeo4j delivers graph technology that has been battle tested for performance and scale...
» more
Competitive advantagesNeo4j is the market leader, graph database category creator, and the most widely...
» more
Typical application scenariosReal-Time Recommendations Master Data Management Identity and Access Management Network...
» more
Key customersOver 800 commercial customers and over 4300 startups use Neo4j. Flagship customers...
» more
Market metricsNeo4j boasts the world's largest graph database ecosystem with more than 140 million...
» more
Licensing and pricing modelsGPL v3 license that can be used all the places where you might use MySQL. Neo4j Commercial...
» more
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