Databricks vs Oracle Big Data Appliance comparison

Databricks and Oracle are both solutions in the Cloud Data Warehouse category. Additionally, 96% of Databricks users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 71% of Oracle users who would recommend it.

Databricks

Read 88 Databricks reviews

2,196 Views
1,662 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

Oracle Big Data Appliance

Read 5 Oracle Big Data Appliance reviews

381 Views
251 Comparison Views

71% willing to recommend

Databricks

Oracle Big Data Appliance

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Databricks and Oracle Big Data Appliance based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Cloud Data Warehouse solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Databricks vs. Oracle Big Data Appliance Report (Updated: March 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Databricks vs. Oracle Big Data Appliance

March 2025

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Helped 848,207 peers since 2012

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

Databricks

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Data Warehouse (7th), Data Science Platforms (1st), Streaming Analytics (1st)

Oracle Big Data Appliance

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Data Warehouse (19th)

Featured Reviews

ShubhamSharma7

Data Engineer at a engineering company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Capability to integrate diverse coding languages in a single notebook greatly enhances workflow

Databricks offers various courses that I can use, whether it's PySpark, Scala, or R. I can leverage all these courses in a single notebook, which is beneficial for clients as they can access various tools in one place whenever needed. This is quite significant. I usually work with PySpark based on client requirements. After coding, I feed the Databricks notebooks into the ADF pipeline for updates. Databricks' capability to process data in parallel enhances data processing speed. Furthermore, I can connect our Databricks notebook directly with Power BI and other visualization tools like Qlik. Once we develop code, it allows us to transform raw data into visualizations for clients using analysis diagrams, which is very helpful.

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Mohammed Hamad

AI & Data Engineering Lead at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

Provides clean, centralized data

From a technical perspective, Big Data Appliance could be improved with more innovation in the AI and machine-learning parts instead of relying on Cloudera. Oracle could also improve Big Data Appliance by having one technology on their stack and working on it instead of continually changing the name or technologies or features. In addition, they could have a program to enable their partners to use this technology because right now, I have to have an expert to use the AI elements.

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Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"Databricks makes it really easy to use a number of technologies to do data analysis. In terms of languages, we can use Scala, Python, and SQL. Databricks enables you to run very large queries, at a massive scale, within really good timeframes."

"We have the ability to scale, collaborate and do machine learning."

"A very valuable feature is the data processing, and the solution is specifically good at using the Spark ecosystem."

"It's very simple to use Databricks Apache Spark."

"Easy to use and requires minimal coding and customizations."

"The solution's features are fantastic and include interactive clusters that perform at top speed when compared to other solutions."

"The time travel feature is the solution's most valuable aspect."

"Imageflow is a visual tool that helps make it easier for business people to understand complex workflows."

More Databricks pros

"Because Big Data Appliance allows me to have a single source of truth, it means I have clean data that can be monetized and leveraged to gain more insights with real-time reports from the dashboard."

"This is a comprehensive solution that is easy to deploy."

"The best thing about the product is that the end-user can build the reports by themselves without really knowing anything about databases."

Cons

"Anyone who doesn't know SQL may find the product difficult to work with."

"There has been a significant evolution in databases. One area of improvement is the Databricks File System (DBFS), where command-line challenges arise when accessing files."

"I have seen better user interfaces, so that is something that can be improved."

"Databricks can improve by making the documentation better."

"The solution could be improved by adding a feature that would make it more user-friendly for our team. The feature is simple, but it would be useful. Currently, our team is more familiar with the language R, but Databricks requires the use of Jupyter Notebooks which primarily supports Python. We have tried using RStudio, but it is not a fully integrated solution. To fully utilize Databricks, we have to use the Jupyter interface. One feature that would make it easier for our team to adopt the Jupyter interface would be the ability to select a specific variable or line of code and execute it within a cell. This feature is available in other Jupyter Notebooks outside of Databricks and in our own IDE, but it is not currently available within Databricks. If this feature were added, it would make the transition to using Databricks much smoother for our team."

"Would be helpful to have additional licensing options."

"Doesn't provide a lot of credits or trial options."

"Databricks requires writing code in Python or SQL, so if you're a good programmer then you can use Databricks."

More Databricks cons

"It seems like the deployment of repositories has become more difficult in later versions of the product rather than easier."

"The product should be simplified for the average user."

"From a technical perspective, Big Data Appliance could be improved with more innovation in the AI and machine-learning parts instead of relying on Cloudera."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The basic version of this solution is now open-source, so there are no license costs involved. However, there is a charge for any advanced functionality and this can be quite expensive."

"I would rate Databricks' pricing seven out of ten."

"The solution uses a pay-per-use model with an annual subscription fee or package. Typically this solution is used on a cloud platform, such as Azure or AWS, but more people are choosing Azure because the price is more reasonable."

"The cost is around $600,000 for 50 users."

"I rate the price of Databricks as eight out of ten."

"We're charged on what the data throughput is and also what the compute time is."

"I would rate the tool’s pricing an eight out of ten."

"We pay as we go, so there isn't a fixed price. It's charged by the unit. I don't have any details detail about how they measure this, but it should be a mix between processing and quantity of data handled. We run a simulation based on our use cases, which gives us an estimate. We've been monitoring this, and the costs have met our expectations."

More Databricks pricing and cost advice

"Oracle's prices are too high compared to others in the market."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

17%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Healthcare Company

Financial Services Firm

31%

Computer Software Company

15%

Government

10%

University

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

Which do you prefer - Databricks or Azure Machine Learning Studio?

Databricks gives you the option of working with several different languages, such as SQL, R, Scala, Apache Spark, or Python. It offers many different cluster choices and excellent integration with ...

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How would you compare Databricks vs Amazon SageMaker?

We researched AWS SageMaker, but in the end, we chose Databricks. Databricks is a Unified Analytics Platform designed to accelerate innovation projects. It is based on Spark so it is very fast. It...

See all answers

Which would you choose - Databricks or Azure Stream Analytics?

Databricks is an easy-to-set-up and versatile tool for data management, analysis, and business analytics. For analytics teams that have to interpret data to further the business goals of their orga...

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Comparisons

Dataiku vs Databricks

Compared 11% of the time

Microsoft Power BI vs Databricks

Compared 9% of the time

Dremio vs Databricks

Compared 8% of the time

Informatica PowerCenter vs Databricks

Compared 7% of the time

Tableau vs Databricks

Compared 5% of the time

More Databricks Competitors

Oracle Exadata vs Oracle Big Data Appliance

Compared 73% of the time

Apache Hadoop vs Oracle Big Data Appliance

Compared 27% of the time

More Oracle Big Data Appliance Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Databricks

April 2025

Download Databricks product report

Buyer's Guide

Data Warehouse

April 2025

Download Oracle Big Data Appliance product report

Also Known As

Databricks Unified Analytics, Databricks Unified Analytics Platform, Redash

No data available

Overview

Databricks is utilized for advanced analytics, big data processing, machine learning models, ETL operations, data engineering, streaming analytics, and integrating multiple data sources.

Organizations leverage Databricks for predictive analysis, data pipelines, data science, and unifying data architectures. It is also used for consulting projects, financial reporting, and creating APIs. Industries like insurance, retail, manufacturing, and pharmaceuticals use Databricks for data management and analytics due to its user-friendly interface, built-in machine learning libraries, support for multiple programming languages, scalability, and fast processing.

What are the key features of Databricks?

User-friendly interface: Simplifies operations and usability.
Built-in machine learning libraries: Facilitates machine learning tasks.
Support for multiple programming languages: Enhances flexibility.
Scalability: Efficiently handles growing data needs.
Fast processing: Improves performance and speed.
Automated optimization: Reduces manual efforts.
Data visualization: Provides insightful visuals.
Collaborative features: Enhances teamwork.
Delta Lake performance: Boosts data management.
Seamless cluster management: Simplifies system operations.

What are the benefits or ROI to look for in Databricks reviews?

Efficiency in handling large datasets: Ensures smooth processing.
Interactive workspace environment: Improves user collaboration.
Integration with platforms: Provides connectivity benefits.
Performance optimization: Enhances overall system performance.
Support for data governance and security: Ensures data integrity and protection.

Databricks is implemented in insurance for risk analysis and claims processing; in retail for customer analytics and inventory management; in manufacturing for predictive maintenance and supply chain optimization; and in pharmaceuticals for drug discovery and patient data analysis. Users value its scalability, machine learning support, collaboration tools, and Delta Lake performance but seek improvements in visualization, pricing, and integration with BI tools.

Databricks

Oracle Big Data Appliance is a flexible, high-performance, secure platform for running diverse workloads on Hadoop and NoSQL systems. With Oracle Big Data SQL, Oracle Big Data Appliance extends Oracle’s industry-leading implementation of SQL to Hadoop and NoSQL systems. By combining the newest technologies from the Hadoop ecosystem and powerful Oracle SQL capabilities together on a single pre-configured platform, Oracle Big Data Appliance is uniquely able to support rapid development of new Big Data applications and tight integration with existing relational data.

For more information on Oracle Big Data Appliance, visit Oracle.com

Oracle

Sample Customers

Elsevier, MyFitnessPal, Sharethrough, Automatic Labs, Celtra, Radius Intelligence, Yesware

Caixa Bank

Buyer's Guide

Databricks vs. Oracle Big Data Appliance

March 2025

Free Report: Databricks vs. Oracle Big Data Appliance

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