DBMS > Google Cloud Spanner vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. RavenDB vs. SWC-DB vs. Weaviate

System Properties Comparison Google Cloud Spanner vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. RavenDB vs. SWC-DB vs. Weaviate

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

Open Source Operational and Transactional Enterprise NoSQL Document Database

A high performance, scalable Wide Column DBMS

An AI-native realtime vector database engine that integrates scalable machine learning models.

Primary database model

Secondary database models

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS
Time Series DBMS

Time Series DBMS

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

Score	2.89
Rank	#103	Overall
	#52	Relational DBMS

Score	824.29
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	2.92
Rank	#101	Overall
	#18	Document stores

Score	0.01
Rank	#376	Overall
	#13	Wide column stores

Score	1.73
Rank	#143	Overall
	#5	Vector DBMS

Website

cloud.google.com/spanner

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

ravendb.net

github.com/kashirin-alex/swc-db
www.swcdb.org

github.com/weaviate/weaviate
weaviate.io

Technical documentation

cloud.google.com/spanner/docs

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

ravendb.net/docs

weaviate.io/developers/weaviate

Developer

Google

Microsoft

Hibernating Rhinos

Alex Kashirin

Weaviate B.V.

Initial release

2017

1989

2010

2020

2019

Current release

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

5.4, July 2022

0.5, April 2021

1.19, May 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

restricted free version is available

Open Source

AGPL version 3, commercial license available

Open Source

GPL V3

Open Source

commercial license available with Weaviate Enterprise

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
Windows

Linux
macOS
Raspberry Pi
Windows

Linux

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

yes, maps to GraphQL interface

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

string, int, float, geo point, date, cross reference, fuzzy references

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 data objects are indexed in a semantic vector space (the Contextionary), all primitive fields are indexed

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

Query statements complying to ANSI 2011

yes

SQL-like query language (RQL)

SQL-like query language

GraphQL is used as query language

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)

.NET Client API
F# Client API
Go Client API
Java Client API
NodeJS Client API
PHP Client API
Python Client API
RESTful HTTP API

Proprietary protocol
Thrift

GraphQL query language
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Supported programming languages

Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

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

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

C++

JavaScript / TypeScript
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

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

yes

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

Sharding

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

Multi-source replication

yes

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

using Google Cloud Dataflow

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Default ACID transactions on the local node (eventually consistent across the cluster). Atomic operations with cluster-wide ACID transactions. Eventual consistency for indexes and full-text search indexes.

Immediate Consistency

Eventual 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, Cluster-wide transaction available

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)

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Authorization levels configured per client per database

API Keys
OpenID Connect Discovery

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Weaviate is an open source vector database that is robust, scalable, cloud-native,...
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Competitive advantages

Flexible deployment - Free, open source or fully-managed cloud vector database service...
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Typical application scenarios

As a database supporting the development of generative AI and semantic search applications...
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Key customers

All companies that have data.
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Market metrics

As of mid 2023: Over 2 million open source downloads 3500+ Weaviate Slack community...
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Licensing and pricing models

Weaviate is open-source, and free to use. Weaviate is also available as a fully managed...
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