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

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

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.

Virtuoso is a multi-model hybrid-RDBMS that supports management of data represented as relational tables and/or property graphs

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
Graph DBMS
Native XML DBMS
Relational DBMS
RDF store
Search engine

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

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	4.27
Rank	#73	Overall
	#13	Document stores
	#4	Graph DBMS
	#2	Native XML DBMS
	#39	Relational DBMS
	#2	RDF stores
	#9	Search engines

Website

cloud.google.com/spanner

www.postgresql.org

ravendb.net

rethinkdb.com

virtuoso.openlinksw.com

Technical documentation

cloud.google.com/spanner/docs

www.postgresql.org/docs

ravendb.net/docs

rethinkdb.com/docs

docs.openlinksw.com/virtuoso

Developer

Google

PostgreSQL Global Development Group

www.postgresql.org/developer

Hibernating Rhinos

The Linux Foundation

since July 2017

OpenLink Software

Initial release

2017

1989

1989: Postgres, 1996: PostgreSQL

2010

2009

1998

Current release

16.3, May 2024

5.4, July 2022

2.4.1, August 2020

7.2.11, September 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

BSD

Open Source

AGPL version 3, commercial license available

Open Source

Apache Version 2

Open Source

GPLv2, extended commercial license available

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.

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Implementation language

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

AIX
FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

yes

SQL - Standard relational schema
RDF - Quad (S, P, O, G) or Triple (S, P, O)
XML - DTD, XML Schema
DAV - freeform filesystem objects, plus User Defined Types a/k/a Dynamic Extension Type

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

string, binary, float, bool, date, geometry

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

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

yes

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

Query statements complying to ANSI 2011

yes

standard with numerous extensions

SQL-like query language (RQL)

yes

SQL-92, SQL-200x, SQL-3, SQLX

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

ADO.NET
GeoSPARQL
HTTP API
JDBC
Jena RDF API
ODBC
OLE DB
RDF4J API
RESTful HTTP API
Sesame REST HTTP Protocol
SOAP webservices
SPARQL 1.1
WebDAV
XPath
XQuery
XSLT

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

.Net
C
C#
C++
Java
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Visual Basic

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

user defined functions

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

yes

Virtuoso PL

Triggers

yes

Client-side triggers through changefeeds

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

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

Sharding

range based

yes

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

Chain, star, and bi-directional replication
Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

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

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

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

MVCC based

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

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

Fine-grained Attribute-Based Access Control (ABAC) in addition to typical coarse-grained Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) according to SQL-standard. Pluggable authentication with supported standards (LDAP, Active Directory, Kerberos)

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Virtuoso is a modern multi-model RDBMS for managing data represented as tabular relations...
» more

Competitive advantages

Performance & Scale — as exemplified by DBpedia and the LOD Cloud it spawned, i.e.,...
» more

Typical application scenarios

Used for — Analytics/BI Conceptual Data Virtualization Enterprise Knowledge Graphs...
» more

Key customers

Broad use across enterprises and governments including — European Union (EU) US Government...
» more

Market metrics

Largest installed-base of Multi-Model RDBMS for AI-friendly Knowledge Graphs Platform...
» more

Licensing and pricing models

Available in both Commercial Enterprise and Open Source (GPL v2) Editions Feature...
» more

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

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pgDash: In-Depth PostgreSQL Monitoring.
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SharePlex is the reliable and affordable data replication solution for PostgreSQL migrations, high availability and more.
» more

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

Navicat for PostgreSQL is an easy-to-use graphical tool for PostgreSQL database development.
» more

Fujitsu Enterprise Postgres: An Enterprise Grade PostgreSQL with the flexibility of a hybrid cloud solution combined with industry leading security, availability and performance.
» more

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

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

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

We invite representatives of vendors of related products to contact us for presenting information about their offerings here.

More resources

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