DBMS > Google Cloud Spanner vs. PostGIS vs. RDF4J vs. Snowflake

System Properties Comparison Google Cloud Spanner vs. PostGIS vs. RDF4J vs. Snowflake

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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.

Spatial extension of PostgreSQL

RDF4J is a Java framework for processing RDF data, supporting both memory-based and a disk-based storage.

Cloud-based data warehousing service for structured and semi-structured data

Primary database model

Secondary database models

Relational DBMS

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

Score	2.89
Rank	#103	Overall
	#52	Relational DBMS

Score	22.69
Rank	#29	Overall
	#1	Spatial DBMS

Score	0.69
Rank	#230	Overall
	#9	RDF stores

Score	121.33
Rank	#9	Overall
	#6	Relational DBMS

Website

cloud.google.com/spanner

postgis.net

rdf4j.org

www.snowflake.com

Technical documentation

cloud.google.com/spanner/docs

postgis.net/documentation

rdf4j.org/documentation

docs.snowflake.net/manuals/index.html

Developer

Google

Since 2016 officially forked into an Eclipse project, former developer was Aduna Software.

Snowflake Computing Inc.

Initial release

2017

2005

2004

2014

Current release

3.4.2, February 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

GPL v2.0

Open Source

Eclipse Distribution License (EDL), v1.0.

commercial

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.

Implementation language

Java

Server operating systems

hosted

Linux
OS X
Unix
Windows

hosted

Data scheme

yes

RDF Schemas

yes

support of semi-structured data formats (JSON, XML, Avro)

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

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

Query statements complying to ANSI 2011

yes

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

Java API
RIO

RDF Input/Output
Sail API
SeRQL

Sesame RDF Query Language
Sesame REST HTTP Protocol
SPARQL

CLI Client
JDBC
ODBC

Supported programming languages

Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

Java
PHP
Python

JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

user defined functions

yes

user defined functions

Triggers

yes

similar concept for controling cloud resources

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

yes

based on PostgreSQL

none

yes

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication with 3 replicas for regional instances.

yes

based on PostgreSQL

none

yes

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

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

Strict serializable isolation

ACID

Isolation support depends on the API used

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

in-memory storage is supported as well

yes

In-memory capabilities

Is there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users, groups and roles based on Google Cloud Identity and Access Management (IAM)

yes

based on PostgreSQL

Users with fine-grained authorization concept, user roles and pluggable authentication

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