DBMS > Google Cloud Spanner vs. NebulaGraph vs. PostgreSQL

System Properties Comparison Google Cloud Spanner vs. NebulaGraph vs. PostgreSQL

Please select another system to include it in the comparison.

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.

A distributed, linear scalable, high perfomant Graph DBMS

Widely used open source RDBMS

Developed as objectoriented DBMS (Postgres), gradually enhanced with 'standards' like SQL

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Graph DBMS

Relational DBMS

with object oriented extensions, e.g.: user defined types/functions and inheritance. Handling of key/value pairs with hstore module.

Secondary database models

Document store
Graph DBMS

with Apache Age
Spatial DBMS
Vector DBMS

with pgvector extension

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

Score	2.80
Rank	#91	Overall
	#50	Relational DBMS

Score	1.66
Rank	#134	Overall
	#12	Graph DBMS

Score	663.41
Rank	#4	Overall
	#4	Relational DBMS

Website

cloud.google.com/spanner

github.com/vesoft-inc/nebula
www.nebula-graph.io

www.postgresql.org

Technical documentation

cloud.google.com/spanner/docs

docs.nebula-graph.io

www.postgresql.org/docs

Developer

Google

Vesoft Inc.

PostgreSQL Global Development Group

www.postgresql.org/developer

Initial release

2017

2019

1989

1989: Postgres, 1996: PostgreSQL

Current release

16.4, August 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Apache Version 2.0 + Common Clause 1.0

Open Source

BSD

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.

PostgreSQL Flex @ STACKIT offers managed PostgreSQL Instances with adjustable CPU, RAM, storage amount and speed and several extensions available, in enterprise grade to perfectly match all application requirements. All 100% GDPR-compliant.

Implementation language

C++

Server operating systems

hosted

Linux

FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
NetBSD
OpenBSD
OS X
Solaris
Unix
Windows

Data scheme

yes

Strong typed schema

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

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

specific XML-type available, but no XML query functionality.

Secondary indexes

yes

Nebula Graph internally uses the Key-Value store RocksDB for persistency. The vertices, edges, and their properties are stored as Key while their values are stored as Value. The primary indexes are per Key and secondary indexes are per Value.

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

Query statements complying to ANSI 2011

SQL-like query language

yes

standard with numerous extensions

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

Browser interface
console (shell)
Cypher Query Language
GO Object Graph Mapper
Java Object Graph Mapper
NGBatis

ORM framework for NebulaGraph and Spring-Boot
Proprietary native API
Python Object Graph Mapper
Query language nGQL

ADO.NET
JDBC
native C library
ODBC
streaming API for large objects

Supported programming languages

Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

.Net
C++
Go
Java
PHP
Python

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java

JDBC
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
Tcl

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

user defined functions

realized in proprietary language PL/pgSQL or with common languages like Perl, Python, Tcl etc.

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

partitioning by range, list and (since PostgreSQL 11) by hash

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication with 3 replicas for regional instances.

Causal Clustering using Raft protocol

Source-replica replication

other methods possible by using 3rd party extensions

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

using Google Cloud Dataflow

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

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

yes

Relationships in graphs

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

Strict serializable isolation

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

using RocksDB

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)

Role-based access control

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

NebulaGraph is a truly distributed, linearly scalable, lightning-fast graph database,...
» more

Competitive advantages

NebulaGraph boasts the world's only graph database solution that is able to host...
» more

Typical application scenarios

Social networking Fraud detection Knowledge graph Data warehouse management Anti...
» more

Key customers

Companies from a variety of industries have implemented NebulaGraph Database in production,...
» more

Market metrics

At our very early stage, NebulaGraph has already received over 10,000 stars on GitHub...
» more

Licensing and pricing models

NebulaGraph is open source and free to use under Apache 2.0 license.
» more

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.