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DBMS > Google Cloud Spanner vs. Neo4j vs. Riak TS

System Properties Comparison Google Cloud Spanner vs. Neo4j vs. Riak TS

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines
NameGoogle Cloud Spanner  Xexclude from comparisonNeo4j  Xexclude from comparisonRiak TS  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 offeringsRiak TS is a distributed NoSQL database optimized for time series data and based on Riak KV
Primary database modelRelational DBMSGraph DBMSTime Series 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
Score0.19
Rank#317  Overall
#27  Time Series DBMS
Websitecloud.google.com/­spannerneo4j.com
Technical documentationcloud.google.com/­spanner/­docsneo4j.com/­docswww.tiot.jp/­riak-docs/­riak/­ts/­latest
DeveloperGoogleNeo4j, Inc.Open Source, formerly Basho Technologies
Initial release201720072015
Current release5.23, August 20243.0.0, September 2022
License infoCommercial or Open SourcecommercialOpen Source infoGPL version3, commercial licenses availableOpen Source
Cloud-based only infoOnly available as a cloud serviceyesnono
DBaaS offerings (sponsored links) infoDatabase as a Service

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Implementation languageJava, ScalaErlang
Server operating systemshostedLinux infoCan also be used server-less as embedded Java database.
OS X
Solaris
Windows
Linux
OS X
Data schemeyesschema-free and schema-optionalschema-free
Typing infopredefined data types such as float or dateyesyesno
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 Lucenerestricted
SQL infoSupport of SQLyes infoQuery statements complying to ANSI 2011noyes, limited
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
HTTP API
Native Erlang Interface
Supported programming languagesGo
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python
.Net
Clojure
Elixir
Go
Groovy
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala
C infounofficial client library
C#
C++ infounofficial client library
Clojure infounofficial client library
Dart infounofficial client library
Erlang
Go infounofficial client library
Groovy infounofficial client library
Haskell infounofficial client library
Java
JavaScript infounofficial client library
Lisp infounofficial client library
Perl infounofficial client library
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala infounofficial client library
Smalltalk infounofficial client library
Server-side scripts infoStored proceduresnoyes infoUser defined Procedures and FunctionsErlang
Triggersnoyes infovia event handleryes infopre-commit hooks and post-commit hooks
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 onlyselectable replication factor
MapReduce infoOffers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methodsyes infousing Google Cloud Dataflownoyes
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
Foreign keys infoReferential integrityyes infoby using interleaved tables, this features focuses more on performance improvements than on referential integrityyes infoRelationships in graphsno infolinks between datasets can be stored
Transaction concepts infoSupport to ensure data integrity after non-atomic manipulations of dataACID infoStrict serializable isolationACIDno
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.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 SpannerNeo4jRiak TS
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Recent citations in the news

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22 March 2025, infoq.com

New features make Google's Spanner a database for AI
1 August 2024, TechTarget

Google Cloud Spanner gets dual-region configuration option
23 July 2024, InfoWorld

Google Cloud adds graph and vector search features to Spanner database
2 August 2024, techzine.eu

Google Releases Spanner Graph into General Availability
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NoSQL pioneer Basho stamps its mark on time stamp data with Riak TS
6 October 2015, theregister.com

Enterprise NoSQL Database for the IoT Becomes Open Source
12 May 2016, Engineering.com

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1 July 2019, Analytics India Magazine

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provided by Google News



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