DBMS > Google Cloud Spanner vs. gStore vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs. TimesTen

System Properties Comparison Google Cloud Spanner vs. gStore vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs. TimesTen

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.

A native Graph DBMS to store and maintain very large RDF datasets.

Globally distributed, horizontally scalable, multi-model database service

Database as a Service offering with high compatibility to Microsoft SQL Server

An in-memory SQL relational database that delivers microsecond response and high throughput for OLTP applications. TimesTen can be deployed as a standalone database or as a cache to a backend Oracle database.

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Graph DBMS
RDF store

Document store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store
Wide column store

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Spatial DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	2.69
Rank	#101	Overall
	#51	Relational DBMS

Score	0.03
Rank	#367	Overall
	#37	Graph DBMS
	#18	RDF stores

Score	24.97
Rank	#27	Overall
	#4	Document stores
	#2	Graph DBMS
	#3	Key-value stores
	#3	Wide column stores

Score	72.95
Rank	#16	Overall
	#11	Relational DBMS

Score	1.26
Rank	#164	Overall
	#75	Relational DBMS

Website

cloud.google.com/spanner

en.gstore.cn

azure.microsoft.com/services/cosmos-db

azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/azure-sql/database

www.oracle.com/database/technologies/related/timesten.html

Technical documentation

cloud.google.com/spanner/docs

en.gstore.cn/#/enDocs

learn.microsoft.com/azure/cosmos-db

docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-sql

docs.oracle.com/en/database/other-databases/timesten/index.html

Developer

Google

Microsoft

Oracle

originally founded in HP Labs it was acquired by Oracle in 2005

Initial release

2017

2016

2014

2010

1998

Current release

1.2, November 2023

V12

Release 22.1

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

BSD

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

hosted

IBM AIX Power PC 64-bit
Linux arm64
Linux x86-64
Solaris SPARC 64
Solaris SPARC/x86
Solaris x86-64

Data scheme

yes

schema-free and OWL/RDFS-schema support

schema-free

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

JSON types

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

All properties auto-indexed by default

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

Query statements complying to ANSI 2011

SQL-like query language

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
SPARQL 1.1

DocumentDB API
Graph API (Gremlin)
MongoDB API
RESTful HTTP API
Table API

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC

ODBC
ODP.NET
Oracle Call Interface (OCI)
Pro*C/C++ programming interfaces
SQL and PL/SQL via JDBC

Supported programming languages

Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

C++
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python

.Net
C#
Java
JavaScript
JavaScript (Node.js)
MongoDB client drivers written for various programming languages
Python

.Net
C#
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby

C
C++
Java
Node.js
PL/SQL
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

JavaScript

Transact SQL

PL/SQL

Triggers

JavaScript

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication with 3 replicas for regional instances.

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

yes, with always 3 replicas available

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

using Google Cloud Dataflow

with Hadoop integration

Integration with Hadoop/HDInsight on Azure*

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Bounded Staleness
Consistent Prefix
Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Consistency level configurable on request level
Session Consistency

Immediate Consistency

Immediate Consistency or Eventual Consistency depending on configuration

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

yes

Multi-item ACID transactions with snapshot isolation within a partition

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

by means of logfiles and checkpoints

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)

Users, roles and permissions, Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) supported

Access rights can be defined down to the item level

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.