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DBMS > Google Cloud Spanner vs. Sphinx vs. SurrealDB

System Properties Comparison Google Cloud Spanner vs. Sphinx vs. SurrealDB

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines
NameGoogle Cloud Spanner  Xexclude from comparisonSphinx  Xexclude from comparisonSurrealDB  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.Open source search engine for searching in data from different sources, e.g. relational databasesA fully ACID transactional, developer-friendly, multi-model DBMS
Primary database modelRelational DBMSSearch engineDocument store
Graph DBMS
DB-Engines Ranking infomeasures the popularity of database management systemsranking trend
Trend Chart
Score2.56
Rank#97  Overall
#50  Relational DBMS
Score5.72
Rank#56  Overall
#5  Search engines
Score1.08
Rank#176  Overall
#30  Document stores
#16  Graph DBMS
Websitecloud.google.com/­spannersphinxsearch.comsurrealdb.com
Technical documentationcloud.google.com/­spanner/­docssphinxsearch.com/­docssurrealdb.com/­docs
DeveloperGoogleSphinx Technologies Inc.SurrealDB Ltd
Initial release201720012022
Current release3.5.1, February 2023v1.5.0, May 2024
License infoCommercial or Open SourcecommercialOpen Source infoGPL version 2, commercial licence availableOpen Source
Cloud-based only infoOnly available as a cloud serviceyesnono
DBaaS offerings (sponsored links) infoDatabase as a Service

Providers of DBaaS offerings, please contact us to be listed.
Implementation languageC++Rust
Server operating systemshostedFreeBSD
Linux
NetBSD
OS X
Solaris
Windows
Linux
macOS
Windows
Data schemeyesyesschema-free
Typing infopredefined data types such as float or dateyesnoyes
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.no
Secondary indexesyesyes infofull-text index on all search fields
SQL infoSupport of SQLyes infoQuery statements complying to ANSI 2011SQL-like query language (SphinxQL)SQL-like query language
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
Proprietary protocolGraphQL
RESTful HTTP API
WebSocket
Supported programming languagesGo
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python
C++ infounofficial client library
Java
Perl infounofficial client library
PHP
Python
Ruby infounofficial client library
Deno
Go
JavaScript (Node.js)
Rust
Server-side scripts infoStored proceduresnono
Triggersnono
Partitioning methods infoMethods for storing different data on different nodesShardingSharding infoPartitioning is done manually, search queries against distributed index is supported
Replication methods infoMethods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodesMulti-source replication with 3 replicas for regional instances.none
MapReduce infoOffers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methodsyes infousing Google Cloud Dataflownono
Consistency concepts infoMethods to ensure consistency in a distributed systemImmediate Consistency
Foreign keys infoReferential integrityyes infoby using interleaved tables, this features focuses more on performance improvements than on referential integrityno
Transaction concepts infoSupport to ensure data integrity after non-atomic manipulations of dataACID infoStrict serializable isolationnoACID
Concurrency infoSupport for concurrent manipulation of datayesyesyes
Durability infoSupport for making data persistentyesyes infoThe original contents of fields are not stored in the Sphinx index.yes
In-memory capabilities infoIs there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.no
User concepts infoAccess controlAccess rights for users, groups and roles based on Google Cloud Identity and Access Management (IAM)noyes, based on authentication and database rules

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More resources
Google Cloud SpannerSphinxSurrealDB
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22 March 2025, infoq.com

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Google Releases Spanner Graph into General Availability
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