DBMS > Google Cloud Spanner vs. Lovefield vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. SAP SQL Anywhere vs. TimescaleDB

System Properties Comparison Google Cloud Spanner vs. Lovefield vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. SAP SQL Anywhere vs. TimescaleDB

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.

Embeddable relational database for web apps written in pure JavaScript

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

RDBMS database and synchronization technologies for server, desktop, remote office, and mobile environments

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

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

Relational DBMS

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

Score	2.84
Rank	#100	Overall
	#51	Relational DBMS

Score	0.33
Rank	#286	Overall
	#131	Relational DBMS

Score	821.56
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	3.95
Rank	#80	Overall
	#42	Relational DBMS

Score	4.46
Rank	#71	Overall
	#5	Time Series DBMS

Website

cloud.google.com/spanner

google.github.io/lovefield

www.microsoft.com/en-us/sql-server

www.sap.com/products/technology-platform/sql-anywhere.html

www.timescale.com

Technical documentation

cloud.google.com/spanner/docs

github.com/google/lovefield/blob/master/docs/spec_index.md

learn.microsoft.com/en-US/sql/sql-server

help.sap.com/docs/SAP_SQL_Anywhere

docs.timescale.com

Developer

Google

Microsoft

SAP

formerly Sybase

Timescale

Initial release

2017

2014

1989

1992

2017

Current release

2.1.12, February 2017

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

17, July 2015

2.15.0, May 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Apache 2.0

commercial

restricted free version is available

commercial

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.

SQLServer Flex @ STACKIT offers a managed version of SQL Server with adjustable CPU, RAM, storage amount and speed, in enterprise grade to perfectly match all application requirements. All services are 100% GDPR-compliant.

Implementation language

JavaScript

C++

Server operating systems

hosted

server-less, requires a JavaScript environment (browser, Node.js)

tested with Chrome, Firefox, IE, Safari

Linux
Windows

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Linux
OS X
Windows

Data scheme

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

SQL-like query language

via JavaScript builder pattern

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

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
OLE DB
Tabular Data Stream (TDS)

ADO.NET
HTTP API
JDBC
ODBC

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

Supported programming languages

Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

JavaScript

C#
C++
Delphi
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Visual Basic

C
C#
C++
Delphi
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java

JDBC
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

Transact SQL, .NET languages, R, Python and (with SQL Server 2019) Java

yes, in C/C++, Java, .Net or Perl

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

Using read-only observers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

none

tables can be distributed across several files (horizontal partitioning); sharding through federation

none

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.

none

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

Source-replica replication

Database mirroring

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

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

yes, by using IndexedDB or the cloud service Firebase Realtime Database

yes

In-memory capabilities

Is there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.

yes

using MemoryDB

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

More information provided by the system vendor

We invite representatives of system vendors to contact us for updating and extending the system information,
and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.