DBMS > Google Cloud Spanner vs. PostgreSQL vs. RavenDB vs. RethinkDB vs. Tarantool

System Properties Comparison Google Cloud Spanner vs. PostgreSQL vs. RavenDB vs. RethinkDB vs. Tarantool

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.

Widely used open source RDBMS

Developed as objectoriented DBMS (Postgres), gradually enhanced with 'standards' like SQL

Open Source Operational and Transactional Enterprise NoSQL Document Database

DBMS for the Web with a mechanism to push updated query results to applications in realtime.

In-memory computing platform with a flexible data schema for efficiently building high-performance applications

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

with object oriented extensions, e.g.: user defined types/functions and inheritance. Handling of key/value pairs with hstore module.

Document store

Document store
Key-value store
Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
Graph DBMS

with Apache Age
Spatial DBMS
Vector DBMS

with pgvector extension

Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS
Time Series DBMS

Spatial DBMS

with Tarantool/GIS extension

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

Score	2.84
Rank	#100	Overall
	#51	Relational DBMS

Score	636.25
Rank	#4	Overall
	#4	Relational DBMS

Score	2.84
Rank	#101	Overall
	#18	Document stores

Score	2.66
Rank	#107	Overall
	#20	Document stores

Score	1.67
Rank	#143	Overall
	#25	Document stores
	#25	Key-value stores
	#65	Relational DBMS

Website

cloud.google.com/spanner

Technical documentation

cloud.google.com/spanner/docs

www.postgresql.org/docs

ravendb.net/docs

rethinkdb.com/docs

www.tarantool.io/en/doc

Developer

Google

PostgreSQL Global Development Group

www.postgresql.org/developer

Hibernating Rhinos

The Linux Foundation

since July 2017

Initial release

2017

1989

1989: Postgres, 1996: PostgreSQL

2010

2009

2008

Current release

16.3, May 2024

5.4, July 2022

2.4.1, August 2020

2.10.0, May 2022

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

BSD

Open Source

AGPL version 3, commercial license available

Open Source

Apache Version 2

Open Source

BSD-2, source-available extensions (modules), commercial licenses for Tarantool Enterprise

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

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Implementation language

C++

C and C++

Server operating systems

hosted

FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
NetBSD
OpenBSD
OS X
Solaris
Unix
Windows

Linux
macOS
Raspberry Pi
Windows

Linux
OS X
Windows

BSD
Linux
macOS

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

Flexible data schema: relational definition for tables with ability to store json-like documents in columns

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

string, binary, float, bool, date, geometry

string, double, decimal, uuid, integer, blob, boolean, datetime

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

specific XML-type available, but no XML query functionality.

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

Query statements complying to ANSI 2011

yes

standard with numerous extensions

SQL-like query language (RQL)

Full-featured ANSI SQL support

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

ADO.NET
JDBC
native C library
ODBC
streaming API for large objects

.NET Client API
F# Client API
Go Client API
Java Client API
NodeJS Client API
PHP Client API
Python Client API
RESTful HTTP API

Open binary protocol

Supported programming languages

Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java

JDBC
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
Tcl

.Net
C#
F#
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby

community-supported driver
C#

community-supported driver
C++

community-supported driver
Clojure

community-supported driver
Dart

community-supported driver
Erlang

community-supported driver
Go

community-supported driver
Haskell

community-supported driver
Java

official driver
JavaScript (Node.js)

official driver
Lisp

community-supported driver
Lua

community-supported driver
Objective-C

community-supported driver
Perl

community-supported driver
PHP

community-supported driver
Python

official driver
Ruby

official driver
Scala

community-supported driver

C
C#
C++
Erlang
Go
Java
JavaScript
Lua
Perl
PHP
Python
Rust

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

user defined functions

realized in proprietary language PL/pgSQL or with common languages like Perl, Python, Tcl etc.

yes

Lua, C and SQL stored procedures

Triggers

yes

Client-side triggers through changefeeds

yes, before/after data modification events, on replication events, client session events

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

partitioning by range, list and (since PostgreSQL 11) by hash

Sharding

range based

Sharding, partitioned with virtual buckets by user defined affinity key. Live resharding for scale up and scale down without maintenance downtime.

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication with 3 replicas for regional instances.

Source-replica replication

other methods possible by using 3rd party extensions

Multi-source replication

Source-replica replication

Asynchronous replication with multi-master option
Configurable replication topology (full-mesh, chain, star)
Synchronous quorum replication (with Raft)

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

using Google Cloud Dataflow

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Default ACID transactions on the local node (eventually consistent across the cluster). Atomic operations with cluster-wide ACID transactions. Eventual consistency for indexes and full-text search indexes.

Immediate Consistency

Casual consistency across sharding partitions
Eventual consistency within replicaset partition

when using asyncronous replication
Immediate Consistency within single instance
Sequential consistency including linearizable read within replicaset partition

when using Raft

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

ACID, Cluster-wide transaction available

Atomic single-document operations

ACID, with serializable isolation and linearizable read (within partition); Configurable MVCC (within partition); No cross-shard distributed transactions

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

MVCC based

yes, cooperative multitasking

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

yes, write ahead logging

In-memory capabilities

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

yes, full featured in-memory storage engine with persistence

User concepts

Access control

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

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Authorization levels configured per client per database

yes

users and table-level permissions

Access Control Lists
Mutual TLS authentication for Tarantol Enterprise
Password based authentication
Role-based access control (RBAC) and LDAP for Tarantol Enterprise
Users and Roles

More information provided by the system vendor

We invite representatives of system vendors to contact us for updating and extending the system information,
and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.

Related products and services

3rd parties

Navicat for PostgreSQL is an easy-to-use graphical tool for PostgreSQL database development.
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Timescale: Calling all PostgreSQL users – the 2023 State of PostgreSQL survey is now open! Share your favorite extensions, preferred frameworks, community experiences, and more. Take the survey today!
» more

pgDash: In-Depth PostgreSQL Monitoring.
» more

Navicat Monitor is a safe, simple and agentless remote server monitoring tool for PostgreSQL and many other database management systems.
» more

SharePlex is the reliable and affordable data replication solution for PostgreSQL migrations, high availability and more.
» more

Redgate webinars: A series of key topics for new PostgreSQL users.
» more

Aiven for PostgreSQL: Fully managed PostgreSQL for developers with 70+ extensions and flexible orchestration tools.
» more

Instaclustr: Fully Hosted & Managed PostgreSQL
» more

CYBERTEC is your professional partner in PostgreSQL topics for over 20 years. As our main aim is to be your single-source all-in-one IT service provider, we offer a wide range of products and services. Visit our website for more details.
» more

Fujitsu Enterprise Postgres: An Enterprise Grade PostgreSQL with the flexibility of a hybrid cloud solution combined with industry leading security, availability and performance.
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We invite representatives of vendors of related products to contact us for presenting information about their offerings here.

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