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DBMS > Google Cloud Spanner vs. Neo4j vs. SurrealDB vs. Titan

System Properties Comparison Google Cloud Spanner vs. Neo4j vs. SurrealDB vs. Titan

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines
NameGoogle Cloud Spanner  Xexclude from comparisonNeo4j  Xexclude from comparisonSurrealDB  Xexclude from comparisonTitan  Xexclude from comparison
Titan has been decommisioned after the takeover by Datastax. It will be removed from the DB-Engines ranking. A fork has been open-sourced as JanusGraph.
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 fully ACID transactional, developer-friendly, multi-model DBMSTitan is a Graph DBMS optimized for distributed clusters.
Primary database modelRelational DBMSGraph DBMSDocument store
Graph DBMS
Graph 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
Score1.08
Rank#176  Overall
#30  Document stores
#16  Graph DBMS
Websitecloud.google.com/­spannerneo4j.comsurrealdb.comgithub.com/­thinkaurelius/­titan
Technical documentationcloud.google.com/­spanner/­docsneo4j.com/­docssurrealdb.com/­docsgithub.com/­thinkaurelius/­titan/­wiki
DeveloperGoogleNeo4j, Inc.SurrealDB LtdAurelius, owned by DataStax
Initial release2017200720222012
Current release5.23, August 2024v1.5.0, May 2024
License infoCommercial or Open SourcecommercialOpen Source infoGPL version3, commercial licenses availableOpen SourceOpen Source infoApache license, version 2.0
Cloud-based only infoOnly available as a cloud serviceyesnonono
DBaaS offerings (sponsored links) infoDatabase as a Service

Providers of DBaaS offerings, please contact us to be listed.
Implementation languageJava, ScalaRustJava
Server operating systemshostedLinux infoCan also be used server-less as embedded Java database.
OS X
Solaris
Windows
Linux
macOS
Windows
Linux
OS X
Unix
Windows
Data schemeyesschema-free and schema-optionalschema-freeyes
Typing infopredefined data types such as float or dateyesyesyesyes
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 2011noSQL-like query languageno
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
GraphQL
RESTful HTTP API
WebSocket
Java API
TinkerPop Blueprints
TinkerPop Frames
TinkerPop Gremlin
TinkerPop Rexster
Supported programming languagesGo
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python
.Net
Clojure
Elixir
Go
Groovy
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala
Deno
Go
JavaScript (Node.js)
Rust
Clojure
Java
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 Fabricyes infovia pluggable storage backends
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 onlyyes
MapReduce infoOffers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methodsyes infousing Google Cloud Dataflownonoyes infovia Faunus, a graph analytics engine
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
Foreign keys infoReferential integrityyes infoby using interleaved tables, this features focuses more on performance improvements than on referential integrityyes infoRelationships in graphsyes infoRelationships in graph
Transaction concepts infoSupport to ensure data integrity after non-atomic manipulations of dataACID infoStrict serializable isolationACIDACIDACID
Concurrency infoSupport for concurrent manipulation of datayesyesyesyes
Durability infoSupport for making data persistentyesyesyesyes infoSupports various storage backends: Cassandra, HBase, Berkeley DB, Akiban, Hazelcast
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)yes, based on authentication and database rulesUser authentification and security via Rexster Graph Server
More information provided by the system vendor
Google Cloud SpannerNeo4jSurrealDBTitan
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22 March 2025, infoq.com

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DataStax Acquires Aurelius and its TitanDB Graph Database
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