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DBMS > Google Cloud Spanner vs. PostgreSQL vs. RethinkDB vs. SwayDB

System Properties Comparison Google Cloud Spanner vs. PostgreSQL vs. RethinkDB vs. SwayDB

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines
NameGoogle Cloud Spanner  Xexclude from comparisonPostgreSQL  Xexclude from comparisonRethinkDB  Xexclude from comparisonSwayDB  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.Widely used open source RDBMS infoDeveloped as objectoriented DBMS (Postgres), gradually enhanced with 'standards' like SQLDBMS for the Web with a mechanism to push updated query results to applications in realtime.An embeddable, non-blocking, type-safe key-value store for single or multiple disks and in-memory storage
Primary database modelRelational DBMSRelational DBMS infowith object oriented extensions, e.g.: user defined types/functions and inheritance. Handling of key/value pairs with hstore module.Document storeKey-value store
Secondary database modelsDocument store
Graph DBMS infowith Apache Age
Spatial DBMS
Vector DBMS infowith pgvector extension
Spatial DBMS
DB-Engines Ranking infomeasures the popularity of database management systemsranking trend
Trend Chart
Score2.89
Rank#105  Overall
#53  Relational DBMS
Score645.05
Rank#4  Overall
#4  Relational DBMS
Score2.84
Rank#106  Overall
#19  Document stores
Score0.04
Rank#373  Overall
#57  Key-value stores
Websitecloud.google.com/­spannerwww.postgresql.orgrethinkdb.comswaydb.simer.au
Technical documentationcloud.google.com/­spanner/­docswww.postgresql.org/­docsrethinkdb.com/­docs
DeveloperGooglePostgreSQL Global Development Group infowww.postgresql.org/­developerThe Linux Foundation infosince July 2017Simer Plaha
Initial release20171989 info1989: Postgres, 1996: PostgreSQL20092018
Current release16.2, February 20242.4.1, August 2020
License infoCommercial or Open SourcecommercialOpen Source infoBSDOpen Source infoApache Version 2Open Source infoGNU Affero GPL V3.0
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.
Aiven for PostgreSQL: Fully managed PostgreSQL for developers with 70+ extensions and flexible orchestration tools.
Implementation languageCC++Scala
Server operating systemshostedFreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
NetBSD
OpenBSD
OS X
Solaris
Unix
Windows
Linux
OS X
Windows
Data schemeyesyesschema-freeschema-free
Typing infopredefined data types such as float or dateyesyesyes infostring, binary, float, bool, date, geometryno
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.noyes infospecific XML-type available, but no XML query functionality.nono
Secondary indexesyesyesyesno
SQL infoSupport of SQLyes infoQuery statements complying to ANSI 2011yes infostandard with numerous extensionsnono
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
ADO.NET
JDBC
native C library
ODBC
streaming API for large objects
Supported programming languagesGo
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python
.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java infoJDBC
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
Tcl
C infocommunity-supported driver
C# infocommunity-supported driver
C++ infocommunity-supported driver
Clojure infocommunity-supported driver
Dart infocommunity-supported driver
Erlang infocommunity-supported driver
Go infocommunity-supported driver
Haskell infocommunity-supported driver
Java infoofficial driver
JavaScript (Node.js) infoofficial driver
Lisp infocommunity-supported driver
Lua infocommunity-supported driver
Objective-C infocommunity-supported driver
Perl infocommunity-supported driver
PHP infocommunity-supported driver
Python infoofficial driver
Ruby infoofficial driver
Scala infocommunity-supported driver
Java
Kotlin
Scala
Server-side scripts infoStored proceduresnouser defined functions inforealized in proprietary language PL/pgSQL or with common languages like Perl, Python, Tcl etc.no
TriggersnoyesClient-side triggers through changefeedsno
Partitioning methods infoMethods for storing different data on different nodesShardingpartitioning by range, list and (since PostgreSQL 11) by hashSharding inforange basednone
Replication methods infoMethods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodesMulti-source replication with 3 replicas for regional instances.Source-replica replication infoother methods possible by using 3rd party extensionsSource-replica replicationnone
MapReduce infoOffers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methodsyes infousing Google Cloud Dataflownoyesno
Consistency concepts infoMethods to ensure consistency in a distributed systemImmediate ConsistencyImmediate ConsistencyImmediate ConsistencyImmediate Consistency
Foreign keys infoReferential integrityyes infoby using interleaved tables, this features focuses more on performance improvements than on referential integrityyesnono
Transaction concepts infoSupport to ensure data integrity after non-atomic manipulations of dataACID infoStrict serializable isolationACIDAtomic single-document operationsAtomic execution of operations
Concurrency infoSupport for concurrent manipulation of datayesyesyes infoMVCC basedyes
Durability infoSupport for making data persistentyesyesyesyes
In-memory capabilities infoIs there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.nononoyes
User concepts infoAccess controlAccess rights for users, groups and roles based on Google Cloud Identity and Access Management (IAM)fine grained access rights according to SQL-standardyes infousers and table-level permissionsno

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More resources
Google Cloud SpannerPostgreSQLRethinkDBSwayDB
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