DB-EnginesInfluxDB: Focus on building software with an easy-to-use serverless, scalable time series platformEnglish
Deutsch
Knowledge Base of Relational and NoSQL Database Management Systemsprovided by solid IT

DBMS > Google Cloud Spanner vs. NCache vs. Neo4j vs. Sphinx

System Properties Comparison Google Cloud Spanner vs. NCache vs. Neo4j vs. Sphinx

Please select another system to include it in the comparison.

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines
NameGoogle Cloud Spanner  Xexclude from comparisonNCache  Xexclude from comparisonNeo4j  Xexclude from comparisonSphinx  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.Open-Source and Enterprise in-memory Key-Value StoreScalable, ACID-compliant graph database designed with a high-performance distributed cluster architecture, available in self-hosted and cloud offeringsOpen source search engine for searching in data from different sources, e.g. relational databases
Primary database modelRelational DBMSKey-value storeGraph DBMSSearch engine
Secondary database modelsDocument store
Search engine infoUsing distributed Lucene
DB-Engines Ranking infomeasures the popularity of database management systemsranking trend
Trend Chart
Score2.89
Rank#105  Overall
#53  Relational DBMS
Score0.98
Rank#196  Overall
#29  Key-value stores
Score44.47
Rank#23  Overall
#1  Graph DBMS
Score6.03
Rank#60  Overall
#6  Search engines
Websitecloud.google.com/­spannerwww.alachisoft.com/­ncacheneo4j.comsphinxsearch.com
Technical documentationcloud.google.com/­spanner/­docswww.alachisoft.com/­resources/­docsneo4j.com/­docssphinxsearch.com/­docs
DeveloperGoogleAlachisoftNeo4j, Inc.Sphinx Technologies Inc.
Initial release2017200520072001
Current release5.3.3, April 20245.19, April 20243.5.1, February 2023
License infoCommercial or Open SourcecommercialOpen Source infoEnterprise Edition availableOpen Source infoGPL version3, commercial licenses availableOpen Source infoGPL version 2, commercial licence available
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.
Neo4j Aura: Neo4j’s fully managed cloud service: The zero-admin, always-on graph database for cloud developers.
Implementation languageC#, .NET, .NET Core, JavaJava, ScalaC++
Server operating systemshostedLinux
Windows
Linux infoCan also be used server-less as embedded Java database.
OS X
Solaris
Windows
FreeBSD
Linux
NetBSD
OS X
Solaris
Windows
Data schemeyesschema-freeschema-free and schema-optionalyes
Typing infopredefined data types such as float or dateyespartial infoSupported data types are Lists, Queues, Hashsets, Dictionary and Counteryesno
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.nono
Secondary indexesyesyesyes infopluggable indexing subsystem, by default Apache Luceneyes infofull-text index on all search fields
SQL infoSupport of SQLyes infoQuery statements complying to ANSI 2011SQL-like query syntax and LINQ for searching the cache. Cache Synchronization with SQL Server using SQL dependency.noSQL-like query language (SphinxQL)
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
IDistributedCache
JCache
LINQ
Proprietary native API
Bolt protocol
Cypher query language
Java API
Neo4j-OGM infoObject Graph Mapper
RESTful HTTP API
Spring Data Neo4j
TinkerPop 3
Proprietary protocol
Supported programming languagesGo
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python
.Net
.Net Core
C#
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python
Scala
.Net
Clojure
Elixir
Go
Groovy
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala
C++ infounofficial client library
Java
Perl infounofficial client library
PHP
Python
Ruby infounofficial client library
Server-side scripts infoStored proceduresnono infosupport for stored procedures with SQL-Server CLRyes infoUser defined Procedures and Functionsno
Triggersnoyes infoNotificationsyes infovia event handlerno
Partitioning methods infoMethods for storing different data on different nodesShardingyesyes using Neo4j FabricSharding infoPartitioning is done manually, search queries against distributed index is supported
Replication methods infoMethods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodesMulti-source replication with 3 replicas for regional instances.yes, with selectable consistency levelCausal Clustering using Raft protocol infoavailable in in Enterprise Version onlynone
MapReduce infoOffers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methodsyes infousing Google Cloud Dataflowyesnono
Consistency concepts infoMethods to ensure consistency in a distributed systemImmediate ConsistencyEventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency
Strong Eventual Consistency over WAN with Conflict Resolution using Bridge Topology
Causal and Eventual Consistency configurable in Causal Cluster setup
Immediate Consistency in stand-alone mode
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 isolationoptimistic locking and pessimistic lockingACIDno
Concurrency infoSupport for concurrent manipulation of datayesyesyesyes
Durability infoSupport for making data persistentyesyesyesyes infoThe original contents of fields are not stored in the Sphinx index.
In-memory capabilities infoIs there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.noyes
User concepts infoAccess controlAccess rights for users, groups and roles based on Google Cloud Identity and Access Management (IAM)Authentication to access the cache via Active Directory/LDAP (possible roles: user, administrator)Users, roles and permissions. Pluggable authentication with supported standards (LDAP, Active Directory, Kerberos)no
More information provided by the system vendor
Google Cloud SpannerNCacheNeo4jSphinx
Specific characteristicsNCache has been the market leader in .NET Distributed Caching since 2005 . NCache...
» more
Neo4j delivers graph technology that has been battle tested for performance and scale...
» more
Competitive advantagesNCache is 100% .NET/ .NET Core based which fully supports ASP.NET Core Sessions ,...
» more
Neo4j is the market leader, graph database category creator, and the most widely...
» more
Typical application scenariosNCache enables industries like retail, finance, banking IoT, travel, ecommerce, healthcare...
» more
Real-Time Recommendations Master Data Management Identity and Access Management Network...
» more
Key customersBank of America, Citi, Natures Way, Charter Spectrum, Barclays, Henry Schein, GBM,...
» more
Over 800 commercial customers and over 4300 startups use Neo4j. Flagship customers...
» more
Market metricsMarket Leader in .NET Distributed Caching since 2005.
» more
Neo4j boasts the world's largest graph database ecosystem with more than 140 million...
» more
Licensing and pricing modelsNCache Open Source is free on an as-is basis without any support. NCache Enterprise...
» more
GPL v3 license that can be used all the places where you might use MySQL. Neo4j Commercial...
» more
News

This Week in Neo4j: Nodes 2024, Data Modelling, Events, Knowledge Graphs and more
27 April 2024

GQL is Here: Your Cypher Queries in a GQL World
26 April 2024

GQL: The ISO Standard for Graphs Has Arrived
25 April 2024

What Is Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)?
24 April 2024

This Week in Neo4j: Google Cloud, Analysis, Knowledge Graph, Relationships and more
20 April 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.

Related products and services

We invite representatives of vendors of related products to contact us for presenting information about their offerings here.

More resources
Google Cloud SpannerNCacheNeo4jSphinx
DB-Engines blog posts

Applying Graph Analytics to Game of Thrones
12 June 2019, Amy Hodler & Mark Needham, Neo4j (guest author)

MySQL, PostgreSQL and Redis are the winners of the March ranking
2 March 2016, Paul Andlinger

The openCypher Project: Help Shape the SQL for Graphs
22 December 2015, Emil Eifrem (guest author)

show all

The DB-Engines ranking includes now search engines
4 February 2013, Paul Andlinger

show all

Recent citations in the news

Google Improves Cloud Spanner: More Compute and Storage without Price Increase
14 October 2023, InfoQ.com

Google turns up the heat on AWS, claims Cloud Spanner is half the cost of DynamoDB
11 October 2023, TechCrunch

Google makes its Cloud Spanner database service faster and more cost-efficient
11 October 2023, SiliconANGLE News

Google Spanner: When Do You Need to Move to It?
11 September 2023, hackernoon.com

Google Cloud Spanner competes directly with Amazon DynamoDB
12 October 2023, Techzine Europe

provided by Google News

How to use NCache in ASP.Net Core
25 February 2019, InfoWorld

Custom Response Caching Using NCache in ASP.NET Core
22 April 2020, InfoQ.com

provided by Google News

Neo4j CTO says new Graph Query Language standard will have 'massive ripple effects'
27 April 2024, SiliconANGLE News

Neo4j Announces Collaboration with Microsoft to Advance GenAI and Data Solutions USA - English - India - English
26 March 2024, PR Newswire

Using Neo4j’s graph database for AI in Azure
4 April 2024, InfoWorld

Neo4j Is Planning IPO on Nasdaq, Largest Owner Greenbridge Says
15 February 2024, Bloomberg

Leveraging Neo4j and Amazon Bedrock for an Explainable, Secure, and Connected Generative AI Solution | Amazon ...
10 November 2023, AWS Blog

provided by Google News

Switching From Sphinx to MkDocs Documentation — What Did I Gain and Lose
2 February 2024, Towards Data Science

Manticore is a Faster Alternative to Elasticsearch in C++
25 July 2022, hackernoon.com

Perplexity AI: From Its Use To Operation, Everything You Need To Know About Googles Newest Challenger
11 January 2024, Free Press Journal

The Pirate Bay was recently down for over a week due to a DDoS attack
29 October 2019, The Hacker News

How to Build 600+ Links in One Month
4 September 2020, Search Engine Journal

provided by Google News



Share this page

Featured Products

Ontotext logo

GraphDB allows you to link diverse data, index it for semantic search and enrich it via text analysis to build big knowledge graphs. Get it free.

Neo4j logo

See for yourself how a graph database can make your life easier.
Use Neo4j online for free.

Milvus logo

Vector database designed for GenAI, fully equipped for enterprise implementation.
Try Managed Milvus for Free

Datastax Astra logo

Bring all your data to Generative AI applications with vector search enabled by the most scalable
vector database available.
Try for Free

SingleStore logo

Database for your real-time AI and Analytics Apps.
Try it today.

Present your product here