We performed a comparison between SAP BW4HANA and SQL Server based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about Snowflake Computing, Oracle, Teradata and others in Data Warehouse."The processes are the most valuable aspect of this solution."
"The most valuable feature is the dashboard."
"The most valuable aspect of this solution is that the infrastructure is easy to understand."
"The ability to instantly pull data is the most valuable feature."
"It can calculate data in detail. Before we could not calculate financial documents and accountant documents in detail, we could not do it at a document level but now we can. This is the most important feature. It also has predictive analysis memory."
"The solution is based on SAP ERP, so there's some business content already included. For customers who use SAP ERP, SAP BW4HANA is a good choice for their DW implementation."
"It is a very stable solution."
"We can get good visualization and less redundant data."
"The most valuable features are programmability and reliability."
"The solution is very easy to use."
"The performance of SQL Server is perfect."
"The most valuable aspect is the ability to utilize jobs and various functions to accomplish specific tasks, which cannot be achieved with standard procedures alone. This allows for a combination of features and functionalities to be employed."
"It will do clustering, so you can have two database servers looking at the same data simultaneously."
"One of the best features of SQL Server is the efficient retrieval of information."
"It integrates well with other platforms."
"The initial setup isn't overly complex."
"The solution does occasionally get a few bugs, but this is typical for any product."
"There's one area where the other vendors have an upper edge, which is the data lake. I think SAP is trying to figure out whether to stick with IQ, their own data lake solution, or push customers toward customer-preferred vendors, like Azure Data Lake, AWS, or any other provider."
"Not a ten because it's expensive and its ecosystem is not very open."
"The monitoring for the remodeling feature is very difficult to understand."
"They have taken out a few BW functionalities when they redesigned this. The way of multi-dimensional thinking and star schema got a little bit lost. It may be because of the cost, but certain functionalities that were previously implemented from the BW side should come back again in the whole product. It is a young product. It is version 2.0. In time, I'm pretty sure they will come back again because otherwise, it limits the potential of the product, and I have to do a lot of modeling towards that direction. For me, the analytics focus is too much. It is not cube-oriented in that way, so its functionality is limited. It is not really technically limited in the back end; it is more limited in the front end. It has a data-mining mindset for SQL developers. The navigational attributes should be easy. It needs to be built in models. I see the data mark cube or understanding that the composite provider needs to be models in a cube coming back. The multi-dimensional star schema approach and the reporting need to be done as well as possible to leverage the star scheme below. This is definitely not understood by many consultants and even composite providers for star schema. They always think in terms of flat tables, which is limiting. You need to build the right dimensions, objects, and so on. If you can build this in BW4HANA, then you have this understanding that BW4HANA is not forcing you in this direction, but it should force you a bit better in this direction. Maybe a few elements which were in use in BW should come back again. It would help the community to determine the direction to build on the cube. You can have maybe 50 elements, and then you can expand it to what you need by leveraging navigation. So far, this functionality is a little bit limited in the tool, and it is not thought through, but I think it will come. They should also be adding more capabilities for the transformation between different objects. In BW, this is currently limited, especially towards composite providers. It is a bit complex basically in the building. You have to have a lot of knowledge as well as know how to do it better because it is a bit different from BW. There is not too much expertise currently in the consulting markets. Many are trying to build something, but it may be based on their knowledge of what they have from the BW and HANA side. You have to find the right mix from both of them at this time. We also have HANA Native. These are our two different sync sources basically, and we have approaches to connect nicely, but it is hard to manage your team because a lot of coaching is required."
"From a technical perspective, it could be even more related to legacy systems. The connectivity requirement is quite high and requires systems that are up-to-date."
"It's complicated to use. You need to spend a lot of time learning about it. The interface could be improved. It's not intuitive to build a data model and use their ETL tools."
"I don't see SAP actively supporting the solution now...a better support from SAP would be appreciated."
"We want to move to Azure, and the solution could be made better to make the process easier for the migration from on-premise to the cloud."
"The integration could be better. They are not open-source, so the integration with other platforms is not that easy."
"I would like to see more integration with other products and it needs to be more secure."
"In terms of what could be improved, everything on-premise is now moving to the cloud. Obviously SQL Server has also moved, because Microsoft Excel has its own cloud called Azure Finance. Every solution comes with its own advantages and disadvantages."
"The interface of the tool has certain shortcomings, making it an area where improvements are required."
"Only one CPU core can be used. Can’t move a database between servers easily. Can’t use triggers."
"In the next releases, I would only like more enhanced backups and more restore points."
"The interface could be updated to make it slightly more user-friendly."
SAP BW4HANA is ranked 8th in Data Warehouse with 36 reviews while SQL Server is ranked 1st in Relational Databases Tools with 260 reviews. SAP BW4HANA is rated 7.4, while SQL Server is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of SAP BW4HANA writes "Performs all necessary data warehouse tasks and offers additional functionalities". On the other hand, the top reviewer of SQL Server writes "Easy to use and provides good speed and data recovery". SAP BW4HANA is most compared with Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics, Snowflake, SAP HANA, Amazon Redshift and SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse, whereas SQL Server is most compared with MariaDB, SAP HANA, Oracle Database, LocalDB and IBM Db2 Database.
We monitor all Data Warehouse reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
