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DBMS > Google Cloud Spanner vs. Neo4j vs. Oracle NoSQL

System Properties Comparison Google Cloud Spanner vs. Neo4j vs. Oracle NoSQL

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines
NameGoogle Cloud Spanner  Xexclude from comparisonNeo4j  Xexclude from comparisonOracle NoSQL  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.Scalable, ACID-compliant graph database designed with a high-performance distributed cluster architecture, available in self-hosted and cloud offeringsA multi-model, scalable, distributed NoSQL database, designed to provide highly reliable, flexible, and available data management across a configurable set of storage nodes
Primary database modelRelational DBMSGraph DBMSDocument store
Key-value store
Relational DBMS
DB-Engines Ranking infomeasures the popularity of database management systemsranking trend
Trend Chart
Score2.56
Rank#97  Overall
#50  Relational DBMS
Score47.91
Rank#20  Overall
#1  Graph DBMS
Score3.39
Rank#76  Overall
#13  Document stores
#9  Key-value stores
#40  Relational DBMS
Websitecloud.google.com/­spannerneo4j.comwww.oracle.com/­database/­nosql/­technologies/­nosql
Technical documentationcloud.google.com/­spanner/­docsneo4j.com/­docsdocs.oracle.com/­en/­database/­other-databases/­nosql-database/­index.html
DeveloperGoogleNeo4j, Inc.Oracle
Initial release201720072011
Current release5.23, August 202425.1, April 2025
License infoCommercial or Open SourcecommercialOpen Source infoGPL version3, commercial licenses availableOpen Source infoProprietary for Enterprise Edition (Oracle Database EE license has Oracle NoSQL database EE covered: details)
Cloud-based only infoOnly available as a cloud serviceyesnono
DBaaS offerings (sponsored links) infoDatabase as a Service

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Implementation languageJava, ScalaJava
Server operating systemshostedLinux infoCan also be used server-less as embedded Java database.
OS X
Solaris
Windows
Linux
Solaris SPARC/x86
Data schemeyesschema-free and schema-optionalSupport Fixed schema and Schema-less deployment with the ability to interoperate between them.
Typing infopredefined data types such as float or dateyesyesoptional
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 indexesyesyes infopluggable indexing subsystem, by default Apache Luceneyes
SQL infoSupport of SQLyes infoQuery statements complying to ANSI 2011noSQL-like DML and DDL statements
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
Bolt protocol
Cypher query language
Java API
Neo4j-OGM infoObject Graph Mapper
RESTful HTTP API
Spring Data Neo4j
TinkerPop 3
RESTful HTTP API
Supported programming languagesGo
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python
.Net
Clojure
Elixir
Go
Groovy
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala
C#
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python
Rust
Typescript (Node.js)
Server-side scripts infoStored proceduresnoyes infoUser defined Procedures and Functionsno
Triggersnoyes infovia event handlerno
Partitioning methods infoMethods for storing different data on different nodesShardingyes using Neo4j FabricSharding
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 onlyElectable source-replica replication per shard. Support distributed global deployment with Multi-region table feature
MapReduce infoOffers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methodsyes infousing Google Cloud Dataflownowith Hadoop integration
Consistency concepts infoMethods to ensure consistency in a distributed systemImmediate ConsistencyCausal and Eventual Consistency configurable in Causal Cluster setup
Immediate Consistency in stand-alone mode
Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency infodepending on configuration
Foreign keys infoReferential integrityyes infoby using interleaved tables, this features focuses more on performance improvements than on referential integrityyes infoRelationships in graphsno
Transaction concepts infoSupport to ensure data integrity after non-atomic manipulations of dataACID infoStrict serializable isolationACIDconfigurable infoACID within a storage node (=shard)
Concurrency infoSupport for concurrent manipulation of datayesyesyes
Durability infoSupport for making data persistentyesyesyes
In-memory capabilities infoIs there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.noyes infooff heap cache
User concepts infoAccess controlAccess rights for users, groups and roles based on Google Cloud Identity and Access Management (IAM)Users, roles and permissions. Pluggable authentication with supported standards (LDAP, Active Directory, Kerberos)Access rights for users and roles
More information provided by the system vendor
Google Cloud SpannerNeo4jOracle NoSQL
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More resources
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