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DBMS > Google Cloud Spanner vs. Milvus vs. Neo4j vs. searchxml

System Properties Comparison Google Cloud Spanner vs. Milvus vs. Neo4j vs. searchxml

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines
NameGoogle Cloud Spanner  Xexclude from comparisonMilvus  Xexclude from comparisonNeo4j  Xexclude from comparisonsearchxml  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.A DBMS designed for efficient storage of vector data and vector similarity searchesScalable, ACID-compliant graph database designed with a high-performance distributed cluster architecture, available in self-hosted and cloud offeringsDBMS for structured and unstructured content wrapped with an application server
Primary database modelRelational DBMSVector DBMSGraph DBMSNative XML DBMS
Search engine
DB-Engines Ranking infomeasures the popularity of database management systemsranking trend
Trend Chart
Score2.89
Rank#105  Overall
#53  Relational DBMS
Score1.81
Rank#144  Overall
#5  Vector DBMS
Score44.47
Rank#23  Overall
#1  Graph DBMS
Score0.01
Rank#386  Overall
#7  Native XML DBMS
#24  Search engines
Websitecloud.google.com/­spannermilvus.ioneo4j.comwww.searchxml.net/­category/­products
Technical documentationcloud.google.com/­spanner/­docsmilvus.io/­docs/­overview.mdneo4j.com/­docswww.searchxml.net/­support/­handouts
DeveloperGoogleNeo4j, Inc.informationpartners gmbh
Initial release2017201920072015
Current release2.3.4, January 20245.19, April 20241.0
License infoCommercial or Open SourcecommercialOpen Source infoApache Version 2.0Open Source infoGPL version3, commercial licenses availablecommercial
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.
Zilliz Cloud – Cloud-native service for MilvusNeo4j Aura: Neo4j’s fully managed cloud service: The zero-admin, always-on graph database for cloud developers.
Implementation languageC++, GoJava, ScalaC++
Server operating systemshostedLinux
macOS info10.14 or later
Windows infowith WSL 2 enabled
Linux infoCan also be used server-less as embedded Java database.
OS X
Solaris
Windows
Windows
Data schemeyesschema-free and schema-optionalschema-free
Typing infopredefined data types such as float or dateyesVector, Numeric and Stringyesyes
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.nonoyes
Secondary indexesyesnoyes infopluggable indexing subsystem, by default Apache Luceneyes
SQL infoSupport of SQLyes infoQuery statements complying to ANSI 2011nonono
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
RESTful HTTP APIBolt protocol
Cypher query language
Java API
Neo4j-OGM infoObject Graph Mapper
RESTful HTTP API
Spring Data Neo4j
TinkerPop 3
RESTful HTTP API
WebDAV
XQuery
XSLT
Supported programming languagesGo
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python
.Net
Clojure
Elixir
Go
Groovy
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala
C++ infomost other programming languages supported via APIs
Server-side scripts infoStored proceduresnonoyes infoUser defined Procedures and Functionsyes infoon the application server
Triggersnonoyes 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.Causal Clustering using Raft protocol infoavailable in in Enterprise Version onlyyes infosychronisation to multiple collections
MapReduce infoOffers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methodsyes infousing Google Cloud Dataflownonono
Consistency concepts infoMethods to ensure consistency in a distributed systemImmediate ConsistencyBounded Staleness
Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency
Session Consistency
Tunable Consistency
Causal and Eventual Consistency configurable in Causal Cluster setup
Immediate Consistency in stand-alone mode
Immediate Consistency
Foreign keys infoReferential integrityyes infoby using interleaved tables, this features focuses more on performance improvements than on referential integritynoyes infoRelationships in graphsno
Transaction concepts infoSupport to ensure data integrity after non-atomic manipulations of dataACID infoStrict serializable isolationnoACIDmultiple readers, single writer
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.noyesno
User concepts infoAccess controlAccess rights for users, groups and roles based on Google Cloud Identity and Access Management (IAM)Role based access control and fine grained access rightsUsers, roles and permissions. Pluggable authentication with supported standards (LDAP, Active Directory, Kerberos)Domain, group and role-based access control at the document level and for application services
More information provided by the system vendor
Google Cloud SpannerMilvusNeo4jsearchxml
Specific characteristicsMilvus is an open-source and cloud-native vector database built for production-ready...
» more
Neo4j delivers graph technology that has been battle tested for performance and scale...
» more
Competitive advantagesHighly available, versatile, and robust with millisecond latency. Supports batch...
» more
Neo4j is the market leader, graph database category creator, and the most widely...
» more
Typical application scenariosRAG: retrieval augmented generation Video media : video understanding, video deduplication....
» more
Real-Time Recommendations Master Data Management Identity and Access Management Network...
» more
Key customersMilvus is trusted by thousands of enterprises, including PayPal, eBay, IKEA, LINE,...
» more
Over 800 commercial customers and over 4300 startups use Neo4j. Flagship customers...
» more
Market metricsAs of January 2024, 25k+ GitHub stars 10M+ downloads and installations​ ​ 3k+ enterprise...
» more
Neo4j boasts the world's largest graph database ecosystem with more than 140 million...
» more
Licensing and pricing modelsMilvus was released under the open-source Apache License 2.0 in October 2019. Fully-managed...
» more
GPL v3 license that can be used all the places where you might use MySQL. Neo4j Commercial...
» more
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