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SAP IQ vs SQL Server comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 4, 2025

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 IQ
Ranking in Relational Databases Tools
26th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
21
Ranking in other categories
Data Warehouse (13th)
SQL Server
Ranking in Relational Databases Tools
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
268
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Relational Databases Tools category, the mindshare of SAP IQ is 0.7%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SQL Server is 18.6%, down from 23.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Relational Databases Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Tejas Raj - PeerSpot reviewer
Columnar database, so pulling records is easy but there isn't enough documentation for installation
I've seen very few SAP IQ systems in recent years. So people are moving away from SAP IQ In the last three years, I've rarely encountered customers using it. Fewer systems with SAP IQ usage among our customers. Most of them have moved on to HANA. There are parallel products, and there are also viable alternatives from AWS, so many have migrated to those.
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 initial setup is easy."
"IQ is a very high-performance and high-transaction database."
"Columnar storage allows high compression, high load rates and high query performance."
"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."
"It is very robust for ad hoc DW queries and its columnar compression is unique and valuable."
"The column-based technologies (basically all the database for ITP) are used for SAP IQ. It is used as a column-based solution."
"All data is compressed and indexed, allowing for fast execution of transactions."
"Valuable features for us include the compression, speed, fast response time, and easy object maintenance."
"SQL Server provides good performance. Most of the SQL solutions can be integrated and this solution is no different, you are able to link other databases. For example, we have Oracle running a Postgres Server and it is linked. It follows the ISO standard when it comes to commands, it works well."
"can extract data from the server and store it in a local data source for BI purposes."
"Agent service is a good feature of SQL Server, where you can schedule certain tasks."
"The solution is configurable."
"The most valuable feature would most likely be querying. We query a lot, we use a lot of stored procedures. As for other features, such as replication and all other more fancy features we don't use them the most. I do not know, but perhaps the DBAs would be the best people who know of the features that they use, but as far as how I use it, it's just for querying and running stored procedures. We use the bare minimum features."
"There was an online system in which we had about 2500 requests to the DB per second. Every request had a completion window of one second to process and retrieve data. After switching to SQL Server, and AlwaysOn, and Snapshot, and tinkering, and configuring and tinkering, the handling capacity we measured increased to about 5000 requests per second, while the time decreased to 0.5 seconds per request."
"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."
"The Always On tool improves the SQL server availability."
 

Cons

"The only negative aspect of IQ is the cost, which can be challenging for companies in Peru."
"The solution works best when combined with other SAP solutions. If the environment has other systems other options might be better."
"The organization who owns the product does not support it well and appears not to be doing significant development for the future."
"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."
"There is very little documentation available."
"The primary negative aspect is the cost, which can be a challenge due to the economic conditions in Peru."
"The tool gets stuck sometimes."
"I think the universe should be part of the Sybase IQ tool set."
"I do not think SQL Server is suited for a typical database warehouse environment. However, people do use SQL Server for data warehouse environments but the best use case is for very small databases. If somebody wants to store more than 10 TB of data querying then the performance really degrades. The performance should be improved in the future to allow more scalability."
"I would like Microsoft to evolve SQL Server because stateful databases dying are in a way. We would like to find out if it can absorb Hadoop and other similar things. They should make it useful for data mining. Data is evolving forever, and how we store it is also changing constantly. So, SQL Server also needs to change."
"Analysis services have a lot of room for improvement. Basically, manageability on the available tools. They should have improved them already. They are not very efficient. My main headache is with the analysis service, and it would be really good if Microsoft developed some additional tools that are more user-friendly to manage the analysis. This is both from the perspective of management, users' roles, and performance analysis. My main wish for SQL Server would be that management tools for analysis services grow and mature a bit."
"I would like to see improvements made to the stability of SQL Server, as well as more analytics requirements."
"The solution could improve by having better integration."
"The remote access aspect needs to be improved in terms of security."
"The performance is not always the best."
"The performance could be better."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The only costs after standard licensing fees are for add-ons and upgrades."
"Negotiation is very important."
"Evaluate all options; check to see if you need expensive add-ons."
"The cost of implementation is about $3,000."
"It's not that costly. So, the pricing is cheap."
"Negotiate based on the features required."
"For licensing, we pay yearly. The licensing is very expensive, and it should be cheaper."
"We didn't have any licensing costs for SQL Server."
"The product is expensive."
"There is a license required for this solution."
"Their options for concurrency and locking are good, as well as their prices."
"If you are looking for a small setup and do not want an open-source solution or invest too much money in your database then SQL Server is a very good choice."
"The licenses are really expensive. Their licensing model should be more simplistic."
"SQL Server offers three versions. You can get a free trial for 30 days."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
44%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Healthcare Company
6%
Educational Organization
53%
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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SAP IQ?
IQ implementation costs about three thousand dollars. It's less expensive compared to alternatives like Teradata Base in terms of transactional efficiency.
What needs improvement with SAP IQ?
The primary negative aspect is the cost, which can be a challenge due to the economic conditions in Peru.
What is your primary use case for SAP IQ?
I worked on implementing new databases, migration data in production, and developer environments with SAP IQ.
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

Sybase IQ
Microsoft SQL Server, MSSQL, MS SQL
 

Overview

 

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.
Find out what your peers are saying about SAP IQ vs. SQL Server and other solutions. Updated: February 2025.
845,040 professionals have used our research since 2012.