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DBMS > Google Cloud Spanner vs. Snowflake vs. Splice Machine

System Properties Comparison Google Cloud Spanner vs. Snowflake vs. Splice Machine

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines
NameGoogle Cloud Spanner  Xexclude from comparisonSnowflake  Xexclude from comparisonSplice Machine  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.Cloud-based data warehousing service for structured and semi-structured dataOpen-Source SQL RDBMS for Operational and Analytical use cases with native Machine Learning, powered by Hadoop and Spark
Primary database modelRelational DBMSRelational DBMSRelational DBMS
DB-Engines Ranking infomeasures the popularity of database management systemsranking trend
Trend Chart
Score2.56
Rank#97  Overall
#50  Relational DBMS
Score172.01
Rank#6  Overall
#5  Relational DBMS
Score0.54
Rank#243  Overall
#114  Relational DBMS
Websitecloud.google.com/­spannerwww.snowflake.comsplicemachine.com
Technical documentationcloud.google.com/­spanner/­docsdocs.snowflake.net/­manuals/­index.htmlsplicemachine.com/­how-it-works
DeveloperGoogleSnowflake Computing Inc.Splice Machine
Initial release201720142014
Current release3.1, March 2021
License infoCommercial or Open SourcecommercialcommercialOpen Source infoAGPL 3.0, commercial license available
Cloud-based only infoOnly available as a cloud serviceyesyesno
DBaaS offerings (sponsored links) infoDatabase as a Service

Providers of DBaaS offerings, please contact us to be listed.
Implementation languageJava
Server operating systemshostedhostedLinux
OS X
Solaris
Windows
Data schemeyesyes infosupport of semi-structured data formats (JSON, XML, Avro)yes
Typing infopredefined data types such as float or dateyesyesyes
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
Secondary indexesyesyes
SQL infoSupport of SQLyes infoQuery statements complying to ANSI 2011yesyes
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
CLI Client
JDBC
ODBC
JDBC
Native Spark Datasource
ODBC
Supported programming languagesGo
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python
C#
C++
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python
R
Scala
Server-side scripts infoStored proceduresnouser defined functionsyes infoJava
Triggersnono infosimilar concept for controling cloud resourcesyes
Partitioning methods infoMethods for storing different data on different nodesShardingyesShared Nothhing Auto-Sharding, Columnar Partitioning
Replication methods infoMethods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodesMulti-source replication with 3 replicas for regional instances.yesMulti-source replication
Source-replica replication
MapReduce infoOffers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methodsyes infousing Google Cloud DataflownoYes, via Full Spark Integration
Consistency concepts infoMethods to ensure consistency in a distributed systemImmediate ConsistencyImmediate ConsistencyImmediate Consistency
Foreign keys infoReferential integrityyes infoby using interleaved tables, this features focuses more on performance improvements than on referential integrityyesyes
Transaction concepts infoSupport to ensure data integrity after non-atomic manipulations of dataACID infoStrict serializable isolationACIDACID
Concurrency infoSupport for concurrent manipulation of datayesyesyes, multi-version concurrency control (MVCC)
Durability infoSupport for making data persistentyesyesyes
In-memory capabilities infoIs there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.nonoyes
User concepts infoAccess controlAccess rights for users, groups and roles based on Google Cloud Identity and Access Management (IAM)Users with fine-grained authorization concept, user roles and pluggable authenticationAccess rights for users, groups and roles according to SQL-standard

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More resources
Google Cloud SpannerSnowflakeSplice Machine
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Recent citations in the news

Google Cloud Introduces HDD Tier for Spanner Database, Cutting Cold Storage Costs by 80%
22 March 2025, infoq.com

New features make Google's Spanner a database for AI
1 August 2024, TechTarget

Google Cloud adds graph processing to Spanner, SQL support to Bigtable
1 August 2024, InfoWorld

Google Cloud adds graph and vector search features to Spanner database
2 August 2024, techzine.eu

Google’s Plan to Make GCP ‘The Best Cloud for Machine Learning’
5 May 2025, SDx Central

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14 May 2025, Investor's Business Daily

The Force Of Data Gravity, With Snowflake
14 May 2025, AdExchanger

HiveMQ, Snowflake partner on automotive IoT data solution
12 May 2025, Engineering.com

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14 May 2025, Cloud Wars

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Machine learning data pipeline outfit Splice Machine files for insolvency
26 August 2021, theregister.com

Splice Machine Launches the Splice Machine Feature Store to Simplify Feature Engineering and Democratize Machine Learning
19 January 2021, PR Newswire

Splice Machine SQL Database Scales On Hadoop
19 May 2014, InformationWeek

Splice Machine Partners with ZEROCODE Technology Co. to Bring Intelligent Application Platform to China
25 July 2018, PRWeb

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