We performed a comparison between SQL Server and Teradata based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Because Teradata is more expensive, has harder initial setup, harder scalability, and fewer features, SQL Server ultimately wins out in this comparison.
"The initial setup is easy, flawless."
"The most valuable feature of the solution, compared to other RDBMS solutions, such as Oracle MySQL or IBM DB2, it is more user-friendly and has backward compatibility. For example, if you have an application that requires an old version of SQL Server and you have the latest version of the license, you are able to install and use it in backward compatibility mode. They keep supporting the existing legacy application."
"The management studio is probably the thing we use the most for running quick queries and creating quick reports. Quite often, somebody comes and says, "Hey, can you find XYZ?" It is so much easier just to jump in there and run a quick query."
"It is quite reliable in cluster configurations and has helped me to reduce downtime and improve SLAs."
"The solution has the capability to scale."
"I use the menu on the management view credit section to get information from the database."
"The solution is user-friendly, is a robust tool and is always reliable to users."
"The initial setup isn't overly complex."
"It's very mature from a technology perspective."
"I found all parts --loading, transformation, processing & querying work in parallel, and end-to-end-- to be valuable."
"Teradata has good performance, the response times are very fast. Overall the solution is easy to use. When we do the transformation, we have all of our staging and aggregation data available."
"There are several features of Teradata that I like. One of the most basic is the indexes. I also like that it provides lower TCO. It also has the optimizer feature which is a good feature and isn't found in other legacy systems. Parallelism is also another feature I like in Teradata because when you are running or hosting on multiple systems, you have this shared-nothing architecture that helps. Loading and unloading in Teradata are also really helpful compared to other systems."
"Auto-partitioning and indexing, and resource allocation on the fly are key features."
"The ability to handle machine data parallel processing is the most valuable feature of Teradata."
"The functionality of the solution is excellent."
"Teradata can be easily used in ETL mode transformations, so there is no need for expensive and inconvenient ETL tools"
"It is very costly, and that's the reason people are moving away from SQL Server."
"SQL Server could improve by being more user-friendly, it is still geared towards specialists. Additionally, the monitoring system is difficult to use, not everyone can use it well. The configuration should be able to be done through the GUI."
"Technical support could be better."
"CAL licenses should cost less. Microsoft usually prices high for client access licenses. Server plus user client access license (CAL) licensing requires a separate Server license for each server on which the software is installed, plus a user CAL for each user accessing the server."
"I would like to see improvements made to the stability of SQL Server, as well as more analytics requirements."
"The solution is rather expensive."
"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 documentation could be much better. It's lacking right now. If there are better help pages, for even complicated queries and stuff like that that would be quite a help for users."
"Teradata should focus on functionality for building predictive models because, in that regard, it can definitely improve."
"An additional feature I would you like to see included in the next release, is that it needs to be more cloud-friendly."
"It would help to make scaling easier with a reduced cost. "
"Teradata could improve by being less complicated. There are some aspects that are not available on the Unix server and a Unix system is required to access some data, such as in case of an emergency."
"The user interface needs to be improved."
"Teradata is an old data warehouse, and they're not improving in terms of new, innovative features."
"It needs a teaching web site with more training on third-party tools used for BI."
"I would like to see more integration with many different types of data."
SQL Server is ranked 1st in Relational Databases Tools with 260 reviews while Teradata is ranked 7th in Relational Databases Tools with 54 reviews. SQL Server is rated 8.4, while Teradata is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of SQL Server writes "Easy to use and provides good speed and data recovery". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Teradata writes "Offers seamless integration capabilities and performance optimization features, including extensive indexing and advanced tuning capabilities". SQL Server is most compared with MariaDB, SAP HANA, Oracle Database, LocalDB and Amazon Aurora, whereas Teradata is most compared with Snowflake, Oracle Exadata, MySQL, BigQuery and Amazon Redshift. See our SQL Server vs. Teradata report.
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We monitor all Relational Databases Tools 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.