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SAP BW4HANA vs SQL Server comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

SAP BW4HANA
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
42
Ranking in other categories
Data Warehouse (9th)
SQL Server
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
267
Ranking in other categories
Relational Databases Tools (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

SAP BW4HANA and SQL Server aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. SAP BW4HANA is designed for Data Warehouse and holds a mindshare of 4.2%, down 4.5% compared to last year.
SQL Server, on the other hand, focuses on Relational Databases Tools, holds 20.1% mindshare, down 23.1% since last year.
Data Warehouse
Relational Databases Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Csaba Grünblatt - PeerSpot reviewer
Performs all necessary data warehouse tasks and offers additional functionalities
SAP BW4HANA improved data reporting processes significantly. Performance on HANA database is good. Well-built data models ensure consistent and fast reporting. Reusable models enhance efficiency, even for SaaS services. In-memory computing, especially since HANA, has greatly improved performance in data analysis tasks. It eliminates the need for complex optimizations like creating indexes or aggregates. Queries that once took minutes now run in seconds, enabling real-time reporting, especially for SAP ECC on HANA. SAP BW4HANA's integration capabilities are streamlined with a simplified architecture and more virtual layers. You can directly load data into optimized layers, reducing the need for extra storage. The introduction of Open ODS Views allows for additional logic and master data inclusion, making integration faster and simpler. The learning curve for SAP BW4HANA is much faster now compared to ten years ago, thanks to abundant free resources like documentation, videos, blogs, and learning journeys provided by SAP. It is simpler to learn with these resources available compared to the past when you had to attend courses and rely on books. I would recommend SAP BW4HANA to users looking to implement it, especially if they want to keep their systems on-premise and already have SAP systems. Those with BW on HANA have two choices: BW4HANA or DataSphere, depending on their cloud strategy. If they are advanced in their cloud strategy and want to migrate off-premise, DataSphere is a good choice. However, for a robust solution on-premise or in a private cloud, BW4HANA is an excellent option. Overall, I would rate BW4HANA as a nine out of ten. It performs all necessary data warehouse tasks and offers additional functionalities. We use it traditionally, with complex transformations and models but with less emphasis on real-time processing and third-party sources.
Azizul Haque - PeerSpot reviewer
It has eliminated all kinds of inconsistencies, and it is reliable, secure, and fast
I don't know whether SQL Server can support large organizations where the database size is more than 100 GB. It might be because of SQL Server, or it might be because of the programming of the software vendor, but a lot of people think that it is a problem with SQL Server. It can't handle a large amount of data or large data size. In terms of its usage, about 90% of our applications are running on the SQL Server database. We have around 1,600 users for our software, and all the applications are connected to the SQL Server database.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution's most valuable feature is that it is a very powerful tool. The solution also has the best stability, robustness, and customizability features."
"Provides a great analytics engine with all the capabilities."
"The solution is useful for connecting with external systems."
"The solution is easier to maintain than traditional SAP products."
"It is a stable solution."
"The ability to instantly pull data is the most valuable feature."
"The solution saves time and cost."
"SAP BW4HANA aids in managing data from ER to front-end analysis, contributes to ROI, and fosters business growth understanding. I like that the solution breaks down components to a very granular level, allowing for customization and implementation based on specific requirements. The solution is stable. The solution is scalable."
"SQL Server stands out due to its robust parallel processing capabilities."
"It's easy to use and fairly intuitive. I do development and data analysis, so we do a lot of work with SSIS and SQL Job Scheduler. Deploying new databases is very simple with things like BACPAC."
"SQL Server is definitely easy to use, and with the volume that we have, it's also stable."
"SQL Server is a very mature solution."
"The most valuable feature is replication because we had several replicas of the SQL Server database in different geographical locations."
"I like that it's a cloud solution, is simple to set up, and is simple to use."
"It's great that the nodes are synchronized so if you lose one it automatically moves to another."
"We have found the feature that allows us to publish web applications to be valuable."
 

Cons

"Pricing would be a good improvement. A lot of customers think that it's very expensive and especially support is very expensive."
"There should be a direct pipeline from Azure to SAP."
"The licensing cost could be made better."
"The solution is not scalable. It does not have a data streaming feature as well."
"The monitoring for the remodeling feature is very difficult to understand."
"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."
"Price wise, this solution is on the higher side."
"The product needs to improve with more performance and fewer data layers."
"The remote access aspect needs to be improved in terms of security."
"Sometimes, the tool doesn't support all the native features, and because of this, our company has to customize it to meet our requirements, which is a challenging process for our company's engineers."
"The price could be better. It costs a lot, and competing databases like Postgres are free."
"The scalability could be better."
"When we run into problems, it's usually during installation, and finding answers to the problem has been a nightmare because the documentation is terrible."
"It would be great if we were able to run it on multiple operating systems and not only stick with Windows."
"It would be nice if there was a feature to search for a specific value across multiple tables. This would save a lot of time for its users."
"The interface could be updated to make it slightly more user-friendly."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"In general, it's quite expensive."
"The SAP HANA application still hasn't been leveraged to the fullest extent, but it's a five-year enterprise license."
"It is an expensive product."
"As an investment, the solution is very expensive."
"The product is free if we have the ECC license."
"Price wise, this solution is on the higher side."
"We have a broad licensing arrangement, which is expensive but worth it for sizeable businesses."
"We started as early birds from the SAP side. We got this entire suite for free. I cannot really talk about the price because we didn't have to pay anything."
"It is annual."
"The product is expensive."
"SQL Server is expensive if you use the advanced SQL version, but if you use the standard version, it's not expensive."
"It's cheaper than Oracle."
"It is expensive."
"The cost is high and because it's an expensive product, we are in the process of moving towards open-source solutions."
"The price of the solution could be cheaper."
"This is a very cheap product."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Energy/Utilities Company
8%
Educational Organization
52%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about SAP BW4HANA?
One significant advantage of SAP BW/4HANA is the direct integration with the SAP HANA database, providing seamless access to real-time analytics. Additionally, it enables real-time data integrati...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SAP BW4HANA?
We have a broad licensing arrangement, which is expensive but worth it for sizeable businesses.
What needs improvement with SAP BW4HANA?
The interface could be more user-friendly, as we often need to do low-level coding to get things done.
Would you say the price of SQL Server is high compared to that of similar products?
SQL Server is fairly priced because it has various editions, depending on the number of users, servers, or core packs you are using. If you compare the product to others in this category, the price...
Has using SQL Server helped your organization in any way?
SQL Server has helped my organization through partitioning to distribute the workload, as it splits them up into smaller pieces so the machines can easily deal with it. However, this comes with a h...
Which authentication mode is best for SQL Server?
My company connects through SQL Server authentication. We have company Windows accounts, but we do not want to connect the two, out of security concerns and to keep things separated for our own pur...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

SAP BW/4HANA
Microsoft SQL Server, MSSQL, MS SQL
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
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.
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