We performed a comparison between Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics and Snowflake based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Based on the parameters we compared, Snowflake had a better user rating regarding ease of deployment and pricing. Both softwares had the same rating when it came to service and support. In terms of features, Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics users felt the software had security issues and didn’t feel it was very intuitive. In contrast, users of Snowflake felt the UI needed improvement.
"The solution operates like a typical SQL Server environment so there is no alienation in terms of technical knowledge."
"The integrated workspace in Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics where everything comes together, such as Power BI and Data Factory, is very good. Additionally, the ability to do dedicated SQL pooling is a benefit."
"It is a fantastic product; we are satisfied with its features and performance."
"What I found most valuable in Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is that it's native only for Azure, so you get better performance and there's no issue. To explain further, many different types of data come, in particular, structured and unstructured data. For audit purposes, there's also unstructured data, so the most important aspect is that with Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics, you have the capability of using both technologies, meaning that you can use or mix structured and unstructured data which is important. This can also be done in Hadoop, and on other platforms, so you have everything in one place. You don't have to worry about how to manage both structured and unstructured data and where to store information. With Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics, you can take care of everything, particularly in Azure. The solution also provides you with many features apart from analytics, for example, storage which makes it better."
"The most valuable feature is the incremental load because we do not need to refresh the entire data on a daily basis."
"The useability, the user interface, is very user-friendly."
"Very interactive and provides flexibility."
"Scaling this solution is easy and the uptime is okay."
"It has great flexibility whenever we are loading data and performs ELT (extract, load, transform) techniques instead of ETL."
"The tool is very easy to use. The solution’s desktop features are also very easy to use. Also, the product’s SQL-based connectivity is also good. It can connect with any tool."
"The way it is built and designed is valuable. The way the shared model is built and the way it exploits the power of the cloud is very good. Certain features related to administration and management, akin to Oracle Flashback and all that, are very important for modern-day administration and management. It is also good in terms of managing and improving performance, indexing, and partitioning. It is sort of completely automated. Everything is essentially under the hood, and the engine takes care of it all. As a data warehouse on the cloud, Snowflake stands strong on its ground even though each of the cloud providers has its own data warehouse, such as Redshift for AWS or Synapse for Azure."
"Snowflake is a database, and it is very good and useful. The most interesting part is that memory management is very good in Snowflake. For a business intelligence project, SQL Server is taking a lot of time for reporting services. There are a lot of calculations, and the reporting time is shown as two minutes, whereas Snowflake is taking just two seconds for the same reporting services."
"The solution's customer service is good."
"The syntax is advanced which reduces the time to write code."
"I like the idea that you can assign roles and responsibilities, limiting access to data."
"I like the fact that we don't need a DBA. It automatically scales stuff."
"In the future, Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics has the potential to enhance its capabilities by expanding its connectors, specifically with regard to Oracle solutions, such as operating systems. This would involve a comprehensive approach to adding more connectors for both data input and consumption purposes. By doing so, Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics would be better equipped to meet the diverse needs of its users and achieve greater efficiency in its performance. The provision of more connectors is definitely a crucial area that needs improvement."
"Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics can improve by adding more flexibility to the reports. Having more visible structures based on the area, region and country would be beneficial."
"Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics's overall integration within the Azure ecosystem could improve. The native Microsoft solution versus another solution, such as Databricks, there are areas where there could be some improvements."
"The configuration for things like high-availability could be more user-friendly for non-technical users."
"Non-structured data is unavailable with this product."
"If I'm looking for something good in the cloud, I would want it to have better standard connectors."
"The major challenge that we're seeing with Azure Synapse is around security concerns. The way it is working right now, it has Managed VNet by Microsoft option, similar to the implementation of Azure Databricks, which may pose a concern for financial institutions. For managed environments, the banks have very strict policies around data being onboarded to those environments. For some confidential applications, the banks have the policy to encrypt it with their own key, so it is sort of like Bring Your Own Key, but it is not possible to manage the resources with Microsoft or Databricks, which is probably the major challenge with Azure Synapse. There should be more compatibility with SQL Server. It should be easier to migrate solutions between different environments because right now, it is not really competitive. It is not like you can go and install SQL Database in some other environment. You will have to go through some migration projects, which probably is one of the major showstoppers for any bank. When they consider Synapse, they not only consider the investment in the actual service; they also consider the cost of the migration process. When you scale out or scale down your system, it becomes unavailable for a few minutes. Because it is a data warehouse environment, it is not such a huge deal, but it would be great if they can improve it so that the platform is available during the change of configuration."
"There is a limit on the number of concurrent queries to around 125 for Azure Synapse."
"There are always a few operation updates here and there that can be made."
"If you go with one cloud provider, you can't switch."
"Product activation queries can't be changed while executing."
"The solution could use a little bit more UI."
"It doesn't enforce typical relational database constraints. Quite expensive."
"If we can have a feature where the results can be moved to different tabs, so that I can compare the results with earlier queries before applying the changes, it would be great."
"The cost is a bit high."
"They need to incorporate some basic OLAP capabilities in the backend or at the database level. Currently, it is purely a database. They call it purely a data warehouse for the cloud. Currently, just like any database, we have to calculate all the KPIs in the front-end tools. The same KPIs again need to be calculated in Snowflake. It would be very helpful if they can include some OLAP features. This will bring efficiency because we will be able to create the KPIs within Snowflake itself and then publish them to multiple front-end tools. We won't have to recreate the same in each project. There should be the ability to automate raised queries, which is currently not possible. There should also be something for Exception Aggregation and things like that."
More Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics Pricing and Cost Advice →
Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is ranked 2nd in Cloud Data Warehouse with 86 reviews while Snowflake is ranked 1st in Cloud Data Warehouse with 92 reviews. Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is rated 7.8, while Snowflake is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics writes "No competitors provide the entire solution to one place ". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Snowflake writes "Good usability, good data sharing and elastic compute features, and requires less DBA involvement". Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is most compared with Azure Data Factory, SAP BW4HANA, Oracle Autonomous Data Warehouse, Teradata and Amazon Redshift, whereas Snowflake is most compared with BigQuery, Azure Data Factory, Teradata, Vertica and SAP BW4HANA. See our Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics vs. Snowflake report.
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