SAP IQ vs SQL Server vs Teradata comparison

Cancel
You must select at least 2 products to compare!
SAP Logo
475 views|372 comparisons
Microsoft Logo
33,485 views|25,100 comparisons
Teradata Logo
5,818 views|4,861 comparisons
Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between SAP IQ, SQL Server, and Teradata based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Oracle, SAP and others in Relational Databases Tools.
To learn more, read our detailed Relational Databases Tools Report (Updated: March 2024).
765,386 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"It is very robust for ad hoc DW queries and its columnar compression is unique and valuable.""The primary benefit of SAP IQ is its ability to limit the expansion of the costly SAP HANA database, which has limited storage capacity. This necessitates a form of data management that involves moving data from SAP HANA to SAP NLS, which is essentially archiving. This allows us to retain access to the data via a link whenever it is required.""Unbeatable speed and compression with a colummn-structured relational database.""The column-based technologies (basically all the database for ITP) are used for SAP IQ. It is used as a column-based solution.""Columnar storage allows high compression, high load rates and high query performance.""Valuable features for us include the compression, speed, fast response time, and easy object maintenance."

More SAP IQ Pros →

"We have found the feature that allows us to publish web applications to be valuable.""This solution has proven stability and operational power.""Its speed and the ease of server management are valuable. If I compare Microsoft SQL Server to MySQL, what I like in Microsoft SQL Server is the speed. We are using Microsoft Management Studio for managing our Microsoft SQL Server, and the user interface that I get to work with is also better.""It is a simple query language. It is consistent across all versions. If you start with an older version, move to the newer version. The same code will still work.""The SQL Server is low maintenance, it does not require advanced technical skills to maintain or use it as you might in other similar database solutions. You need some knowledge on how to access the solution and how to query it but it is fairly straightforward.""The solution can be deployed in a few minutes.""SQL Server's Management Studio is very user friendly. I like their database and the additional features it offers. It's also easy to integrate SQL Server with things like CLR, PowerShell, and command shell""I love SQL Server's Common Table Expression. In addition to that, I like its lead and lag functions. That helped us reduce a lot of code when comparing rows in SQL Server."

More SQL Server Pros →

"The most valuable features are the Shared-nothing architecture and data protection functionality.""Improved performance of ETL procedures, reporting.""It has reduced a lot of reworking on maintaining indexes, partitions, etc.""The most valuable features are the large volume of data and the structuring of the data to optimize it and get very optimal data warehouse solutions for customers.""Teradata can be deployed on-premise, on the cloud, or in a virtual machine, which means customers can move without having to create their architecture all over again.""Auto-partitioning and indexing, and resource allocation on the fly are key features.""​We really enjoy the FastLoad, TPump, and MultiLoad features.​""The feature that we find most valuable is its ability to perform Massive Parallel Processing."

More Teradata Pros →

Cons
"Concurrency and functional error messaging.""The room for improvement would be the marketing of the product, because this product is much better than advertised.""The solution works best when combined with other SAP solutions. If the environment has other systems other options might be better.""Multiplex is very problematic. There are consistency problems in the metadata, meaning it is possible to lose metadata consistency. You should make sure you have healthy backups.""The organization who owns the product does not support it well and appears not to be doing significant development for the future.""I think the universe should be part of the Sybase IQ tool set."

More SAP IQ Cons →

"Sometimes the system hangs. Its databases should be able to deal with more data in a faster way. Its speed of processing larger amounts of information should be improved.""There is a lot of room for improvement when it comes to limited compatibility across the platform and restricted performance with massive data sets.""I would like to see SQL Server add the ability to write to multiple sites or support replication between multiple sites at the transaction level.""Right now we don't get much technical support from Microsoft""SQL Server needs to improve in performance and monitoring because there are no specific monitoring solutions to detect and analyze events for issues in the database. You have to use another monitoring solution. If Microsoft could provide an update to this solution or provide a monitoring solution specifically for SQL Server, it would be very valuable.""They have too many licensing options. They may want to simplify its licensing and bring it down to two, three, or four categories from ten to fifteen categories. Having so many different licensing options makes it difficult to decide which one to choose from. They can club things together. This is an area where they can make things easier for customers.""It is very costly, and that's the reason people are moving away from SQL Server.""Better integration with other platforms would be an improvement."

More SQL Server Cons →

"Teradata hardly supports unstructured data or semi-structured data""We tried to use case Teradata for a data warehouse system, but we had some problems in relation to the Teradata system, CDC tools, and source databases. We were unable to transfer data from HPE Integrity mainframe to Teradata.""The setup is not straightforward.""There is some improvement required on OLTP level and some analytical function is missing.""Teradata needs to pay attention to the cloud-based solution to make sure it runs smoothly.""GUI of administrative tools is really outdated.""I would like to see an improved Knowledge Base on the web.""Query language and its functionality are rather limited, compared to Oracle or even SQL Server. However, it is possible to perform any kind of logic in it (though some workarounds may be required)."

More Teradata Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "Evaluate all options; check to see if you need expensive add-ons."
  • "Negotiate based on the features required."
  • "Negotiation is very important."
  • "The only costs after standard licensing fees are for add-ons and upgrades."
  • More SAP IQ Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "The free version is cumbersome to use and maintain. But $5000 for a licence is more expense than the benefit I would get from a licensed version. A licence might be worth the price to simplify management and speed up searches."
  • "​We are a Microsoft shop, so we use Active Directory. That integrates well with this product, but we did look at Oracle. We also looked at IBM. This was the best price point for us for what we were getting.​"
  • "​It has the easiest licensing."
  • "This is a downside of enterprise Microsoft products."
  • "Currently, almost all of my machines are in Azure and I think it is the best way of licensing now (VM+software)."
  • "The price has been going higher and higher. The market is quite price sensitive."
  • "My advice is quite straightforward. If you know the number of users who really and truly need access to the Server then it is a no-brainer. If you do not know, then get the basic package and minimum licenses and start from there. Needless to say, users can develop/use data structures outside and then deploy onto the Server."
  • "The setup cost is high, but it will return every penny."
  • More SQL Server Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "Teradata is not cheap, but you get what you pay for."
  • "Make sure you have the in-house skills to design and support the solution, as relying on external sources is extremely costly and tends to lock you into specific platforms, tools, and paradigms."
  • "In the past, it turned out that other solutions, in order to provide the full range of abilities that the Teradata platform provides plus the migration costs, would end up costing more than Teradata does."
  • "The initial cost may seem high, but the TCO is low."
  • "Teradata is currently making improvements in this area."
  • "It is still a very expensive solution. While I very much like the pure technological supremacy of the software itself, I believe Teradata as a company needs to become more affordable. They are already losing the market to more flexible or cheaper competitors."
  • "Teradata is expensive but gives value for money, especially if you don't want to move your data to the cloud."
  • "Price is quite high, so if it is really possible to use other solutions (e.g. you do not have strict requirements for performance and huge data volumes), it might be better to look at alternatives from the RDBMS world."
  • More Teradata Pricing and Cost Advice →

    report
    Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Relational Databases Tools solutions are best for your needs.
    765,386 professionals have used our research since 2012.
    Comparison Review
    Anonymous User
    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:The primary benefit of SAP IQ is its ability to limit the expansion of the costly SAP HANA database, which has limited… more »
    Top Answer:The solution’s pricing is high, but coverage is good with high implementation with customer requirements.
    Top Answer:The product should add more business intelligence factors.
    Top Answer:SQL Server is fairly priced because it has various editions, depending on the number of users, servers, or core packs… more »
    Top Answer:SQL Server has helped my organization through partitioning to distribute the workload, as it splits them up into smaller… more »
    Top Answer:My company connects through SQL Server authentication. We have company Windows accounts, but we do not want to connect… more »
    Top Answer: I have spoken to my colleagues about this comparison and in our collective opinion, the reason why some people may… more »
    Top Answer: Before my organization implemented this solution, we researched which big brands were using Teradata, so we knew if it… more »
    Top Answer:Teradata is not a difficult product to work with, especially since they offer you technical support at all levels if you… more »
    Ranking
    Views
    475
    Comparisons
    372
    Reviews
    1
    Average Words per Review
    559
    Rating
    7.0
    Views
    33,485
    Comparisons
    25,100
    Reviews
    26
    Average Words per Review
    361
    Rating
    8.6
    Views
    5,818
    Comparisons
    4,861
    Reviews
    19
    Average Words per Review
    451
    Rating
    8.1
    Comparisons
    Snowflake logo
    Compared 28% of the time.
    SAP HANA logo
    Compared 15% of the time.
    Apache Hadoop logo
    Compared 14% of the time.
    SAP BW4HANA logo
    Compared 12% of the time.
    MariaDB logo
    Compared 19% of the time.
    SAP HANA logo
    Compared 14% of the time.
    Oracle Database logo
    Compared 13% of the time.
    IBM Db2 Database logo
    Compared 9% of the time.
    Amazon Aurora logo
    Compared 5% of the time.
    Snowflake logo
    Compared 12% of the time.
    Oracle Exadata logo
    Compared 10% of the time.
    MySQL logo
    Compared 10% of the time.
    BigQuery logo
    Compared 7% of the time.
    Amazon Redshift logo
    Compared 5% of the time.
    Also Known As
    Sybase IQ
    Microsoft SQL Server, MSSQL, MS SQL
    Learn More
    Overview

    SAP® IQ software delivers speed and power for extreme-scale enterprise data warehousing and analytics. Its column-oriented, grid-based massively parallel processing (MPP) architecture and patented data compression and indexing technologies enable companies to exploit the value of huge amounts of data at the speed of business.

    SQL Server is a relational database management system (RDBMS) by Microsoft. The product's main purposes are to store data and retrieve it as requested by other software applications - on the same computer or on another computer across a shared network. The solution is built on top of Structured Query Language (SQL), which is a standardized programming language used for relational database management.

    The product is tied to Transact-SQL (T-SQL), which is an implementation of SQL from Microsoft that adds several proprietary programming extensions to the standard language. SQL Server is built similarly to other RDBMS products, as its structure is a row-based table that connects related data elements in different tables to one another. One of its most important components is the SQL Server Database Engine, as it controls data processing, storage, and security. Beneath the Database Engine is the SQL Server Operating System, which is used for memory and I/O management, locking data to avoid unneeded upgrades, and job scheduling.

    The solution has four editions with different sets of services and tools. They include:

    • SQL Server Developer
    • SQL Server Expression
    • SQL Server Standard 
    • SQL Server Enterprise

    The first two are available for free and are typically utilized by smaller companies, as they work with fewer functions and storage. The second two editions are generally used by bigger organizations and enterprises and offer more features.

    The solution has several functions through which users can facilitate different data-related processes. These include:

    • Aggregate functions: These functions are used to calculate one or more values and return a single value.

    • Window functions: Window functions calculate an aggregate value based on a group of rows and return multiple rows for each involved group.

    • Date functions: These functions allow clients to handle data and time data efficiently.

    • String functions: Through the string functions, SQL Server processes an input string and returns a string or numeric value.

    • System functions: The system functions of the product return objects, values, and settings.

    SQL Server Services

    SQL Server has a wide range of add-on services that provide additional benefits beyond database management. These services include:

    • Machine learning: SQL Server machine learning services allow users to do machine learning and data analytics within the product.
       
    • Service broker: This feature is a part of the database engine and offers messaging and message queuing for applications on the platform.

    • Replication: This feature consists of transaction replication, merge replication, and snapshot replication. 

    • Analysis: SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS) adds online analytical processing (OLAP) and data mining capabilities to SQL Server databases.

    • Reporting: This feature supports the development of custom reporting applications.

    • Notifications: This feature generates data-driven notifications which are sent to subscribers of Notification Services.

    • Integration: This SQL Server feature provides capabilities for data integration, data import, and data warehousing.

    • Full-text search: Through this feature, users can utilize specialized indexing and query for unstructured text stored in the solution.

    • Visual studio: This feature supports data programming with SQL Server.

    • Azure Data Studio: This is a cross-platform query editor that can be downloaded and used alongside SQL Server.

    SQL Server Benefits

    The solution has many benefits for users. These include the following:

    • The platform ensures a consistent experience across other platforms while being fast and agile.

    • Through the built-in intelligence features, users can understand their data better.

    • The solution has enterprise-level security, which ensures the smooth and safe performance of users' data.

    • SQL Server offers the ability to retrieve large amounts of data quickly and efficiently.

    • The product installation process is fairly easy, and it offers a user-friendly interface.

    • SQL Server offers improved data storage and retrieval functions through frequent upgrades.

    • The solution reduces the risk of database server attacks, since it is not an open-source database.

    Reviews from Real Users

    A president at a consultancy evaluates SQL Server as a veteran solution with critical log shipping feature

    Harkamal S., a user at a manufacturing company, rates SQL Server with a high mark because it is a stable, scalable, and easy-to-deploy solution that pretty much covers everything.

    Teradata is a multi-cloud data platform company that provides data warehouse and relational database tools. The brand has an extensive portfolio of big data analytic solutions, integrated marketing applications, and services. The products that Teradata offers can be categorized in the following ways:

    • Software: The products in this category include Teradata Vantage, an advanced SQL engine and Teradata database.

    • Cloud: The solutions can work with popular cloud services such as Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, and VMware. Teradata Cloud and customer cloud are also included in this product category.

    • Ecosystem management: The products in this section include IntelliSphere, business continuity manager, data lab, data mover, data stream, QueryGrid, and viewpoint.

    • Hardware: This category includes backup, archive, and restore (BAR) and IntelliFlex.

    • Applications: Master data management (MDM) and Teradata analytics for enterprise applications are the two products in this category.

    One of the most popular and commonly used products by Teradata is Teradata Vantage. This is a connected multi-cloud data platform for enterprise analytics. The product unifies data lakes, analytics, and data warehouses, as well as data sources and types. The solution offers its customers scalability, which allows them to scale dimensions to handle massive workloads of data. Teradata Vantage utilizes artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to power more models and enhance quality.

    Through Vantage Console, businesses can benefit from role-based, no-code software to organize and manage their data. The product offers deployment on many popular public clouds, on premises, and on commodity hardware. Teradata Vantage unifies and integrates all data types from sources and provides companies with a single source of information. It achieves this by supporting all common data types and formats. The product also provides organizations with tools for monitoring, analyzing, and connecting data throughout the organizations.

    Part of this product is also VantageCloud, which offers a modern cloud-native architecture as well as hybrid and multi-cloud deployment options. This solution offers new ways for clients to deploy their platforms. These include the next-generation, cloud-native architecture of Teradata VantageCloud Lake.

    Teradata Features

    The different products that Teradata offers have various features which facilitate data management for customers. Some of the key capabilities of the solutions offered by Teradata include:

    • Connectivity: Users can benefit from connections to the mainframe or network-attached systems. The product provides its own extension for interaction with data stored in the tables. It also supports SQL.

    • Linear scalability: Teradata solutions are highly scalable and linear. The solution can handle large volumes of data effectively while also supporting the ability to scale up to 2048 nodes.

    • Load and unload utilities: The product offers features to move data in and out of the product's system effectively.

    • Mature optimizer: Part of this feature is Teradata Optimizer, which is an advanced product that can handle up to 64 joins in a single query.

    • Robust utilities: The solution includes multiple robust utilities in this category of features that facilitate data handling in and out of the product's systems. The tools include MultiLoad, FastLoad, and FastExport.

    • Shared nothing architecture: This set of features, connected to the architecture of Teradata, is known as “shared nothing architecture” because the nodes, processors, and disks all work independently. These capacities ensure better value for a given task.

    • Unlimited parallelism: These features divide large volumes of data into smaller processes that are executed in parallel. This contributes to the execution of complex tasks in a timely manner.

    Teradata Benefits

    Through its multiple solutions, Teradata offers various benefits for its clients. Some of these include:

    • The solution facilitates prototype creation and offers faster times for completion.

    • Through Teradata, users are able to use faster, simpler, and easier solutions for data-related tasks.

    • The product eliminates the need for unnecessary data movement, which contributes to performance improvements.

    • Teradata offers developers the ability to decide where in the architecture different parts of an application run.

    • Teradata allows database administrators to manage databases from a single point of control.

    • The solution provides the option to get the same data on multiple deployment options.

    • The product supports Online Analytical Programming (OLAP) functions, which allows it to perform a complex analytical process of data.

    • Teradata uses the Service Workstation to provide a single operation view for the multi-node system of the product.

    Reviews from Real Users

    Martin P., a services manager at Bytes Systems Integration, describes Teradata as a product that is very fast with good database control and excellent support.

    Blaine V., principal at Insight Data Consulting, rates Teradata highly because of its excellent native features, highly stable, and impressive automation.

    Sample Customers
    ASR Group, Citrix, State of Indiana, PocketCard Co. Ltd.
    Microsoft SQL Server is used by businesses in every industry, including Great Western Bank, Aviva, the Volvo Car Corporation, BMW, Samsung, Principality Building Society, Wellmark Blue Cross and Blue Shield, and the Catholic District School Board of Eastern Ontario.
    Netflix
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm55%
    Marketing Services Firm9%
    Retailer9%
    Manufacturing Company9%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm37%
    Computer Software Company11%
    Manufacturing Company6%
    Healthcare Company4%
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm18%
    Computer Software Company12%
    Manufacturing Company10%
    Comms Service Provider5%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization42%
    Financial Services Firm9%
    Computer Software Company8%
    Manufacturing Company5%
    REVIEWERS
    Comms Service Provider26%
    Computer Software Company22%
    Financial Services Firm9%
    Energy/Utilities Company9%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm26%
    Computer Software Company10%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    Healthcare Company7%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business22%
    Midsize Enterprise11%
    Large Enterprise67%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business11%
    Midsize Enterprise9%
    Large Enterprise80%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business41%
    Midsize Enterprise21%
    Large Enterprise39%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business13%
    Midsize Enterprise48%
    Large Enterprise39%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business33%
    Midsize Enterprise11%
    Large Enterprise56%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business14%
    Midsize Enterprise9%
    Large Enterprise77%
    Buyer's Guide
    Relational Databases Tools
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Oracle, SAP and others in Relational Databases Tools. Updated: March 2024.
    765,386 professionals have used our research since 2012.