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

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

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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.

Open-Source and Enterprise in-memory Key-Value Store

Popular in-memory data platform used as a cache, message broker, and database that can be deployed on-premises, across clouds, and hybrid environments

Redis focuses on performance so most of its design decisions prioritize high performance and very low latencies.

Open source search engine for searching in data from different sources, e.g. relational databases

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Key-value store

Multiple data types and a rich set of operations, as well as configurable data expiration, eviction and persistence

Search engine

Secondary database models

Document store
Search engine

Using distributed Lucene

Document store

with RedisJSON
Graph DBMS

with RedisGraph
Spatial DBMS
Search engine

with RediSearch
Time Series DBMS

with RedisTimeSeries
Vector DBMS

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

Score	2.89
Rank	#105	Overall
	#53	Relational DBMS

Score	0.98
Rank	#196	Overall
	#29	Key-value stores

Score	156.44
Rank	#6	Overall
	#1	Key-value stores

Score	6.03
Rank	#60	Overall
	#6	Search engines

Website

cloud.google.com/spanner

www.alachisoft.com/ncache

redis.com
redis.io

sphinxsearch.com

Technical documentation

cloud.google.com/spanner/docs

www.alachisoft.com/resources/docs

docs.redis.com/latest/index.html
redis.io/docs

sphinxsearch.com/docs

Developer

Google

Alachisoft

Redis project core team, inspired by Salvatore Sanfilippo

Development sponsored by Redis Inc.

Sphinx Technologies Inc.

Initial release

2017

2005

2009

2001

Current release

5.3.3, April 2024

7.2.4, January 2024

3.5.1, February 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Enterprise Edition available

Open Source

source-available extensions (modules), commercial licenses for Redis Enterprise

Open Source

GPL version 2, commercial licence available

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.

Aiven for Redis: Fully managed in-memory key-value store for all your caching and speedy lookup needs.

Implementation language

C#, .NET, .NET Core, Java

C++

Server operating systems

hosted

Linux
Windows

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

ported and maintained by Microsoft Open Technologies, Inc.

FreeBSD
Linux
NetBSD
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

partial

Supported data types are Lists, Queues, Hashsets, Dictionary and Counter

partial

Supported data types are strings, hashes, lists, sets and sorted sets, bit arrays, hyperloglogs and geospatial indexes

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.

Secondary indexes

yes

with RediSearch module

yes

full-text index on all search fields

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

Query statements complying to ANSI 2011

SQL-like query syntax and LINQ for searching the cache. Cache Synchronization with SQL Server using SQL dependency.

with RediSQL module

SQL-like query language (SphinxQL)

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

IDistributedCache
JCache
LINQ
Proprietary native API

proprietary protocol

RESP - REdis Serialization Protocol

Proprietary protocol

Supported programming languages

Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

.Net
.Net Core
C#
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python
Scala

C
C#
C++
Clojure
Crystal
D
Dart
Elixir
Erlang
Fancy
Go
Haskell
Haxe
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Lisp
Lua
MatLab
Objective-C
OCaml
Pascal
Perl
PHP
Prolog
Pure Data
Python
R
Rebol
Ruby
Rust
Scala
Scheme
Smalltalk
Swift
Tcl
Visual Basic

C++

unofficial client library
Java
Perl

unofficial client library
PHP
Python
Ruby

unofficial client library

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

support for stored procedures with SQL-Server CLR

Lua; Redis Functions coming in Redis 7 (slides and Github)

Triggers

yes

Notifications

publish/subscribe channels provide some trigger functionality; RedisGears

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

yes

Sharding

Automatic hash-based sharding with support for hash-tags for manual sharding

Sharding

Partitioning is done manually, search queries against distributed index is supported

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication with 3 replicas for regional instances.

yes, with selectable consistency level

Multi-source replication

with Redis Enterprise Pack
Source-replica replication

Chained replication is supported

none

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

using Google Cloud Dataflow

yes

through RedisGears

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency
Strong Eventual Consistency over WAN with Conflict Resolution using Bridge Topology

Eventual Consistency
Causal consistency can be enabled in Active-Active databases
Strong consistency with Redis Raft
Strong eventual consistency with Active-Active

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

by using interleaved tables, this features focuses more on performance improvements than on referential integrity

Transaction concepts

Support to ensure data integrity after non-atomic manipulations of data

ACID

Strict serializable isolation

optimistic locking and pessimistic locking

Atomic execution of command blocks and scripts and optimistic locking

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Data access is serialized by the server

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

Configurable mechanisms for persistency via snapshots and/or operations logs

yes

The original contents of fields are not stored in the Sphinx index.

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)

Authentication to access the cache via Active Directory/LDAP (possible roles: user, administrator)

Access Control Lists (ACLs): redis.io/docs/management/security/acl
LDAP and Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) for Redis Enterprise
Mutual TLS authentication: redis.io/docs/management/security/encryption
Password-based authentication

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

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Competitive advantages

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Typical application scenarios

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Key customers

Bank of America, Citi, Natures Way, Charter Spectrum, Barclays, Henry Schein, GBM,...
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Market metrics

Market Leader in .NET Distributed Caching since 2005.
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Licensing and pricing models

NCache Open Source is free on an as-is basis without any support. NCache Enterprise...
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