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DBMS > Google Cloud Spanner vs. Neo4j vs. RDF4J

System Properties Comparison Google Cloud Spanner vs. Neo4j vs. RDF4J

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines
NameGoogle Cloud Spanner  Xexclude from comparisonNeo4j  Xexclude from comparisonRDF4J infoformerly known as Sesame  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 offeringsRDF4J is a Java framework for processing RDF data, supporting both memory-based and a disk-based storage.
Primary database modelRelational DBMSGraph DBMSRDF store
DB-Engines Ranking infomeasures the popularity of database management systemsranking trend
Trend Chart
Score4.27
Rank#93  Overall
#47  Relational DBMS
Score52.77
Rank#22  Overall
#1  Graph DBMS
Score1.25
Rank#210  Overall
#8  RDF stores
Websitecloud.google.com/­spannerneo4j.comrdf4j.org
Technical documentationcloud.google.com/­spanner/­docsneo4j.com/­docsrdf4j.org/­documentation
DeveloperGoogleNeo4j, Inc.Since 2016 officially forked into an Eclipse project, former developer was Aduna Software.
Initial release201720072004
Current release5.8, May 2023
License infoCommercial or Open SourcecommercialOpen Source infoGPL version3, commercial licenses availableOpen Source infoEclipse Distribution License (EDL), v1.0.
Cloud-based only infoOnly available as a cloud serviceyesnono
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 languageJava, ScalaJava
Server operating systemshostedLinux infoCan also be used server-less as embedded Java database.
OS X
Solaris
Windows
Linux
OS X
Unix
Windows
Data schemeyesschema-free and schema-optionalyes infoRDF Schemas
Typing infopredefined data types such as float or dateyesyesyes
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.no
Secondary indexesyesyes infopluggable indexing subsystem, by default Apache Luceneyes
SQL infoSupport of SQLyes infoQuery statements complying to ANSI 2011nono
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
Java API
RIO infoRDF Input/Output
Sail API
SeRQL infoSesame RDF Query Language
Sesame REST HTTP Protocol
SPARQL
Supported programming languagesGo
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python
.Net
Clojure
Elixir
Go
Groovy
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala
Java
PHP
Python
Server-side scripts infoStored proceduresnoyes infoUser defined Procedures and Functionsyes
Triggersnoyes infovia event handleryes
Partitioning methods infoMethods for storing different data on different nodesShardingyes using Neo4j Fabricnone
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 onlynone
MapReduce infoOffers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methodsyes infousing Google Cloud Dataflownono
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
Foreign keys infoReferential integrityyes infoby using interleaved tables, this features focuses more on performance improvements than on referential integrityyes infoRelationships in graphs
Transaction concepts infoSupport to ensure data integrity after non-atomic manipulations of dataACID infoStrict serializable isolationACIDACID infoIsolation support depends on the API used
Concurrency infoSupport for concurrent manipulation of datayesyesyes
Durability infoSupport for making data persistentyesyesyes infoin-memory storage is supported as well
In-memory capabilities infoIs there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.no
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)no
More information provided by the system vendor
Google Cloud SpannerNeo4jRDF4J infoformerly known as Sesame
Specific characteristicsNeo4j delivers graph technology that has been battle tested for performance and scale...
» more
Competitive advantagesNeo4j is the market leader, graph database category creator, and the most widely...
» more
Typical application scenariosReal-Time Recommendations Master Data Management Identity and Access Management Network...
» more
Key customersOver 800 commercial customers and over 4300 startups use Neo4j. Flagship customers...
» more
Market metricsNeo4j boasts the world's largest graph database ecosystem with more than 140 million...
» more
Licensing and pricing modelsGPL v3 license that can be used all the places where you might use MySQL. Neo4j Commercial...
» more
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More resources
Google Cloud SpannerNeo4jRDF4J infoformerly known as Sesame
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