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Greenplum Database VS Google Cloud Spanner

Compare Greenplum Database VS Google Cloud Spanner and see what are their differences

Greenplum Database logo Greenplum Database

Greenplum Database is an open source parallel data warehousing platform.

Google Cloud Spanner logo Google Cloud Spanner

Google Cloud Spanner is a horizontally scalable, globally consistent, relational database service.
  • Greenplum Database Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-07-29
  • Google Cloud Spanner Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-17

Greenplum Database features and specs

  • Scalability
    Greenplum Database is designed for massive parallel processing, allowing the system to scale horizontally by adding more nodes to handle large amounts of data efficiently.
  • Open Source
    As an open-source database, Greenplum provides a cost-effective solution for businesses looking to leverage powerful analytics without proprietary software limitations.
  • Advanced Analytics
    Greenplum supports a wide range of data science and machine learning capabilities, making it suitable for complex analytical processing and large-scale data mining.
  • Integration with Hadoop
    Greenplum offers integration capabilities with Hadoop, allowing users to effectively manage and analyze data within hybrid environments.
  • Enterprise Features
    It comes with robust enterprise features including support for ACID compliance, high availability, and backup and recovery capabilities, catering to demanding business needs.

Possible disadvantages of Greenplum Database

  • Complex Setup and Maintenance
    The initial setup and ongoing maintenance can be complex and may require specialized expertise, which could be a barrier for companies with limited technical resources.
  • Resource Intensive
    Greenplum's performance heavily relies on proper resource allocation, and it can be resource-intensive, requiring significant computational power and storage.
  • Requires Expertise
    Effective use of Greenplum often requires a skilled team to manage and optimize the database, which might not be ideal for small teams or organizations.
  • Limited Cloud-Native Features
    Compared to some modern cloud-native databases, Greenplum may lack certain features tailored to cloud environments, which can limit its integration in purely cloud-based setups.
  • Upgrade Processes
    The process for upgrading Greenplum can be complex and time-consuming, potentially causing disruptions if not carefully managed.

Google Cloud Spanner features and specs

  • Scalability
    Google Cloud Spanner can automatically scale horizontally, providing robust support for large-scale applications. It can handle petabytes of data across millions of instances with ease.
  • Global Distribution
    Spanner enables globally distributed databases with strong consistency and low-latency reads, allowing applications to deliver seamless performance across the globe.
  • Strong Consistency
    Unlike many other distributed databases, Cloud Spanner offers strong transactional consistency, using Google's TrueTime API to ensure precise timestamp ordering that supports ACID transactions.
  • Fully Managed
    Cloud Spanner is a fully managed service, which means Google handles maintenance tasks such as updates, scaling, and provisioning, reducing the operational overhead for users.
  • SQL Support
    It provides support for SQL queries, making it easier for developers and teams familiar with SQL to integrate and manage their data workloads without needing to learn new paradigms.
  • High Availability
    Cloud Spanner is designed for high availability, with built-in redundancy and failover capabilities that ensure continuous operation even in the face of regional outages.

Possible disadvantages of Google Cloud Spanner

  • Cost
    Google Cloud Spanner can be expensive compared to other database solutions, especially for smaller applications or startups with limited budgets.
  • Limited Ecosystem
    While growing, Spanner's ecosystem is not as mature as more established relational or NoSQL databases, which might lead to fewer third-party tools and integrations.
  • Complexity in Migration
    Migrating existing applications and data to Cloud Spanner can be complex and time-consuming, particularly for those coming from non-relational database systems.
  • Limited NoSQL Features
    For applications that require specific NoSQL features, such as unstructured data handling and schema flexibility, Cloud Spanner may not be the best fit compared to other NoSQL databases.
  • Regional Lock-in
    Although it offers global distribution, data residency and compliance requirements might limit some organizations to specific regions, which can affect the strategic deployment of an application.

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Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Greenplum Database and Google Cloud Spanner)
Databases
50 50%
50% 50
Relational Databases
47 47%
53% 53
Big Data
100 100%
0% 0
NoSQL Databases
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Google Cloud Spanner should be more popular than Greenplum Database. It has been mentiond 17 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Greenplum Database mentions (4)

  • Ask HN: It's 2023, how do you choose between MySQL and Postgres?
    Friends don't let their friends choose Mysql :) A super long time ago (decades) when I was using Oracle regularly I had to make a decision on which way to go. Although Mysql then had the mindshare I thought that Postgres was more similar to Oracle, more standards compliant, and more of a real enterprise type of DB. The rumor was also that Postgres was heavier than MySQL. Too many horror stories of lost data... - Source: Hacker News / over 2 years ago
  • Amazon Aurora's Read/Write Capability Enhancement with Apache ShardingSphere-Proxy
    A database solution architect at AWS, with over 10 years of experience in the database industry. Lili has been involved in the R&D of the Hadoop/Hive NoSQL database, enterprise-level database DB2, distributed data warehouse Greenplum/Apache HAWQ and Amazonโ€™s cloud native database. - Source: dev.to / over 3 years ago
  • Whatโ€™s the Database Plus concept and what challenges can it solve?
    Today, it is normal for enterprises to leverage diversified databases. In my market of expertise, China, in the Internet industry, MySQL together with data sharding middleware is the go to architecture, with GreenPlum, HBase, Elasticsearch, Clickhouse and other big data ecosystems being auxiliary computing engine for analytical data. At the same time, some legacy systems (such as SQLServer legacy from .NET... - Source: dev.to / over 3 years ago
  • Inspecting joins in PostgreSQL
    PostgreSQL is a free and advanced database system with the capacity to handle a lot of data. Itโ€™s available for very large data in several forms like Greenplum and Redshift on Amazon. It is open source and is managed by an organized and very principled community. - Source: dev.to / over 3 years ago

Google Cloud Spanner mentions (17)

  • Golden Ticket To Explore Google Cloud
    Multiregion is possible in Google Cloud using Cloud Spanner, which allows you to replicate the database not only in multiple zones but also in multiple regions as defined in the instance configuration. The replicas allow you to read data with low latency from multiple locations that are close to or within the region in the configuration. - Source: dev.to / about 2 years ago
  • /u/ryuuthecat wonders how a feature of google maps works. Engineer who programmed the feature responds with the answer
    Basically everything I touch is in-house, but a majority of it is available publicly. For instance: https://cloud.google.com/spanner/. Source: almost 3 years ago
  • How Do Companies (Like Evernote) Handle So Many Notes?
    An application that needs to handle a lot of data can use a distributed database like Cloud Spanner. Unlimited scale and you don't have to split your database into multiple tables. Source: almost 3 years ago
  • One of my favorite topics in DE is CAP Theorem. Has anyone managed to accomplish all 3 at once yet or is it truly impossible like the theorem states.
    Look at the architecture and performance of Google's Cloud Spanner, a CP system with 99.999% availability... https://cloud.google.com/spanner. Source: almost 3 years ago
  • Vaultree and AlloyDB: the world's first Fully Homomorphic and Searchable Cloud Encryption Solution
    In my opinion, Google has built some fantastic database services like Bigtable and Spanner, which literally changed the industry for good, and I am eager to see how they will build upon this new service. With AlloyDB's disaggregated architecture, the dystopian world where I only pay for SQL databases per query and the stored data on GCP seems closer than ever. - Source: dev.to / almost 3 years ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing Greenplum Database and Google Cloud Spanner, you can also consider the following products

Apache Hive - Apache Hive data warehouse software facilitates querying and managing large datasets residing in distributed storage.

PostgreSQL - PostgreSQL is a powerful, open source object-relational database system.

Apache Doris - Apache Doris is an open-source real-time data warehouse for big data analytics.

Oracle DBaaS - See how Oracle Database 12c enables businesses to plug into the cloud and power the real-time enterprise.

ClickHouse - ClickHouse is an open-source column-oriented database management system that allows generating analytical data reports in real time.

MySQL - The world's most popular open source database