DBMS > Google Cloud Spanner vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. QuestDB vs. searchxml

System Properties Comparison Google Cloud Spanner vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. QuestDB vs. searchxml

Please select another system to include it in the comparison.

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.

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

A high performance open source SQL database for time series data

DBMS for structured and unstructured content wrapped with an application server

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Time Series DBMS

Native XML DBMS
Search engine

Secondary database models

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

Relational DBMS

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

Score	2.89
Rank	#105	Overall
	#53	Relational DBMS

Score	829.80
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	2.48
Rank	#115	Overall
	#9	Time Series DBMS

Score	0.01
Rank	#386	Overall
	#7	Native XML DBMS
	#24	Search engines

Website

cloud.google.com/spanner

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

questdb.io

www.searchxml.net/category/products

Technical documentation

cloud.google.com/spanner/docs

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

questdb.io/docs

www.searchxml.net/support/handouts

Developer

Google

Microsoft

QuestDB Technology Inc

informationpartners gmbh

Initial release

2017

1989

2014

2015

Current release

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

1.0

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

restricted free version is available

Open Source

Apache 2.0

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++

Java (Zero-GC), C++, Rust

C++

Server operating systems

hosted

Linux
Windows

Linux
macOS
Windows

Windows

Data scheme

yes

schema-free via InfluxDB Line Protocol

schema-free

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

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

Query statements complying to ANSI 2011

yes

SQL with time-series extensions

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)

HTTP REST
InfluxDB Line Protocol (TCP/UDP)
JDBC
PostgreSQL wire protocol

RESTful HTTP API
WebDAV
XQuery
XSLT

Supported programming languages

Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

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

PostgreSQL driver
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python
Rust

over HTTP

C++

most other programming languages supported via APIs

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

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

yes

on the application server

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

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

horizontal partitioning (by timestamps)

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication with 3 replicas for regional instances.

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

Source-replica replication with eventual consistency

yes

sychronisation to multiple collections

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

ACID for single-table writes

multiple readers, single writer

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

through memory mapped files

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

Domain, group and role-based access control at the document level and for application services

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Relational model with native time series support Column-based storage and time partitioned...
» more

Competitive advantages

High ingestion throughput: peak of 4M rows/sec (TSBS Benchmark) Code optimizations...
» more

Typical application scenarios

Financial tick data Industrial IoT Application Metrics Monitoring
» more

Key customers

Banks & Hedge funds, Yahoo, OKX, Airbus, Aquis Exchange, Net App, Cloudera, Airtel,...
» more

Licensing and pricing models

Open source Apache 2.0 QuestDB Enterprise QuestDB Cloud
» more

News

Does "vpmovzxbd" Scare You? Here's Why it Doesn't Have To
12 April 2024

Create an ADS-B flight radar with QuestDB and a Raspberry Pi
8 April 2024

Build a temperature IoT sensor with Raspberry Pi Pico & QuestDB
5 April 2024

Create an IoT server with QuestDB and a Raspberry Pi
4 April 2024

TimescaleDB vs. QuestDB: Performance benchmarks and overview
27 March 2024

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.