Google Cloud Spanner vs Microsoft SQL Server: What are the differences?
## Introduction
In this article, we will explore the key differences between Google Cloud Spanner and Microsoft SQL Server.
1. **Architecture**: Google Cloud Spanner is a globally distributed, horizontally scalable relational database while Microsoft SQL Server is a traditional relational database system that runs on a single server or cluster of servers.
2. **Consistency Model**: Google Cloud Spanner uses TrueTime for external consistency, ensuring global consistency and transactions across regions, while Microsoft SQL Server follows a traditional ACID compliance model for consistency within a single server or cluster.
3. **Scalability**: Google Cloud Spanner is designed for horizontal scalability, enabling it to handle massive amounts of data and high query volumes across multiple regions, while Microsoft SQL Server has limitations in horizontal scaling.
4. **Pricing Model**: Google Cloud Spanner provides a pricing model based on the resources consumed (compute and storage), with no upfront costs, while Microsoft SQL Server has licensing fees depending on the edition and features used.
5. **Global Distribution**: Google Cloud Spanner allows users to distribute their data globally, ensuring low-latency access from any location, while Microsoft SQL Server requires additional configurations for global replication and failover setups.
6. **Integration with Cloud Services**: Google Cloud Spanner seamlessly integrates with other Google Cloud services for analytics, AI, and machine learning, providing a comprehensive cloud ecosystem, whereas Microsoft SQL Server may require additional setup and configurations for integration with cloud services.
In Summary, Google Cloud Spanner and Microsoft SQL Server differ in architecture, consistency model, scalability, pricing, global distribution capabilities, and integration with cloud services.