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Spanner: Google’s Globally Distributed Database

Open access
Corbett, James C., Dean, Jeffrey, Epstein, Michael, Fikes, Andrew, Frost, Christopher, Furman, J. J., Ghemawat, Sanjay, Gubarev, Andrey, Heiser, Christopher, Hochschild, Peter, Hsieh, Wilson, Kanthak, Sebastian, Kogan, Eugene, Li, Hongyi, Lloyd, Alexander, Melnik, Sergey, Mwaura, David, Nagle, David, Quinlan, Sean, Rao, Rajesh, Rolig, Lindsay, Saito, Yasushi, Szymaniak, Michal, Taylor, Christopher, Wang, Ruth, Woodford, Dale·2013·ACM Transactions on Computer Systems
DOI 10.1145/2491245
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Abstract

Spanner is Google’s scalable, multiversion, globally distributed, and synchronously replicated database. It is the first system to distribute data at global scale and support externally-consistent distributed transactions. This article describes how Spanner is structured, its feature set, the rationale underlying various design decisions, and a novel time API that exposes clock uncertainty. This API and its implementation are critical to supporting external consistency and a variety of powerful features: nonblocking reads in the past, lock-free snapshot transactions, and atomic schema changes, across all of Spanner.

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Research works printed but not linked: 33

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Metadata

Authors
Corbett, J. C., Dean, J., Epstein, M., Fikes, A., Frost, C., Furman, J. J., Ghemawat, S., Gubarev, A., Heiser, C., Hochschild, P., Hsieh, W., Kanthak, S., Kogan, E., Li, H., Lloyd, A., Melnik, S., Mwaura, D., Nagle, D., Quinlan, S., Rao, R., Rolig, L., Saito, Y., Szymaniak, M., Taylor, C., Wang, R., & Woodford, D.
Venue
ACM Transactions on Computer Systems
Publisher
Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
Published
2013-08
Volume
31
Issue
3
Pages
1-22
ISSN
  • 0734-2071 (ISSN-L)
  • 1557-7333
DOI
10.1145/2491245
OpenAlex
W3137759927
Cited by
729
References
0
FWCI
53.75
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
bronze
Licence
www.acm.org/publications/policies/copyright_policy#Background (vor)

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Spanner: Google’s Globally Distributed Database. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1145/2491245
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Corbett, J. C., Dean, J., Epstein, M., Fikes, A., Frost, C., Furman, J. J., Ghemawat, S., Gubarev, A., Heiser, C., Hochschild, P., Hsieh, W., Kanthak, S., Kogan, E., Li, H., Lloyd, A., Melnik, S., Mwaura, D., Nagle, D., Quinlan, S., . . . Woodford, D. (2013). Spanner: Google’s Globally Distributed Database. ACM Transactions on Computer Systems. https://doi.org/10.1145/2491245

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