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

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

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines
NameGoogle Cloud Spanner  Xexclude from comparisonNCache  Xexclude from comparisonNeo4j  Xexclude from comparisonSphinx  Xexclude from comparisonTiDB  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 databasesTiDB is an open source distributed SQL database that supports Hybrid Transactional/Analytical Processing (HTAP) workloads. It is MySQL compatible and features horizontal scalability, strong consistency, and high availability.
Primary database modelRelational DBMSKey-value storeGraph DBMSSearch engineRelational DBMS
Secondary database modelsDocument store
Search engine infoUsing distributed Lucene
Document store
DB-Engines Ranking infomeasures the popularity of database management systemsranking trend
Trend Chart
Score2.84
Rank#100  Overall
#51  Relational DBMS
Score0.96
Rank#195  Overall
#29  Key-value stores
Score44.89
Rank#21  Overall
#1  Graph DBMS
Score5.95
Rank#55  Overall
#5  Search engines
Score4.25
Rank#74  Overall
#40  Relational DBMS
Websitecloud.google.com/­spannerwww.alachisoft.com/­ncacheneo4j.comsphinxsearch.compingcap.com
Technical documentationcloud.google.com/­spanner/­docswww.alachisoft.com/­resources/­docsneo4j.com/­docssphinxsearch.com/­docsdocs.pingcap.com/­tidb/­stable
DeveloperGoogleAlachisoftNeo4j, Inc.Sphinx Technologies Inc.PingCAP, Inc.
Initial release20172005200720012016
Current release5.3.3, April 20245.20, May 20243.5.1, February 20238.1.0, May 2024
License infoCommercial or Open SourcecommercialOpen Source infoEnterprise Edition availableOpen Source infoGPL version3, commercial licenses availableOpen Source infoGPL version 2, commercial licence availableOpen Source infoApache 2.0
Cloud-based only infoOnly available as a cloud serviceyesnononono
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.TiDB Cloud: Fully-managed TiDB Service. Bring everything great about TiDB to the cloud.
Implementation languageC#, .NET, .NET Core, JavaJava, ScalaC++Go, Rust
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
Linux
Data schemeyesschema-freeschema-free and schema-optionalyesyes
Typing infopredefined data types such as float or dateyespartial infoSupported data types are Lists, Queues, Hashsets, Dictionary and Counteryesnoyes
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.nonono
Secondary indexesyesyesyes infopluggable indexing subsystem, by default Apache Luceneyes infofull-text index on all search fieldsyes
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)yes
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 protocolGORM
JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary protocol
SQLAlchemy
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
Ada
C
C#
C++
D
Delphi
Eiffel
Erlang
Haskell
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl
Server-side scripts infoStored proceduresnono infosupport for stored procedures with SQL-Server CLRyes infoUser defined Procedures and Functionsnono
Triggersnoyes infoNotificationsyes infovia event handlernono
Partitioning methods infoMethods for storing different data on different nodesShardingyesyes using Neo4j FabricSharding infoPartitioning is done manually, search queries against distributed index is supportedhorizontal partitioning (by key range)
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 onlynoneUsing Raft consensus algorithm to ensure data replication with strong consistency among multiple replicas.
MapReduce infoOffers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methodsyes infousing Google Cloud Dataflowyesnonoyes infowith TiSpark Connector
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
Immediate Consistency
Foreign keys infoReferential integrityyes infoby using interleaved tables, this features focuses more on performance improvements than on referential integritynoyes infoRelationships in graphsnoyes infofull support since version 6.6
Transaction concepts infoSupport to ensure data integrity after non-atomic manipulations of dataACID infoStrict serializable isolationoptimistic locking and pessimistic lockingACIDnoACID
Concurrency infoSupport for concurrent manipulation of datayesyesyesyesyes
Durability infoSupport for making data persistentyesyesyesyes infoThe original contents of fields are not stored in the Sphinx index.yes
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)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)noFine grained access rights according to SQL-standard
More information provided by the system vendor
Google Cloud SpannerNCacheNeo4jSphinxTiDB
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
TiDB is an advanced open-source, distributed SQL database for modern application...
» 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
- HORIZONTAL SCALING : TiDB grants total transparency into your data workloads without...
» 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
TiDB is ideal for transactional applications that require extreme scalability and...
» 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
Block, Pinterest, Catalyst, Bolt, Flipkart, Capcom, Shopee (E-commerce), JD Cloud...
» 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
34K+ GitHub stars 5K+ members in TiDB Community Slack 1K+ community contributors...
» 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
TiDB Community : Free open source software (Apache 2.0) TiDB Self-Hosted : Enterprise...
» more
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