SQL Server vs Teradata comparison

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SQL Server

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 6, 2024

SQL Server and Teradata are prominent database management systems that compete in the business solutions category. Teradata often has an advantage due to its robust features, particularly in large data environments, whereas SQL Server is preferred for cost-effectiveness and integration capabilities.

Features: SQL Server is favored for its cost-effectiveness, integration with Microsoft tools, and efficient handling of relational data. Users find SQL Server appealing for smaller workloads due to its competitiveness in price and accessibility. Teradata excels in scalability, complex analytical tasks, and performance in large data environments, making it an ideal choice for enterprises with significant data processing needs.

Room for Improvement: SQL Server could enhance performance in handling large data volumes and needs improvement in cloud integration and speed for more extensive environments. Teradata users feel that simplifying its complex setup, improving user training, and streamlining certain operations would benefit its user base. Despite these points for improvement, Teradata demonstrates substantial capabilities.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: SQL Server deployment is straightforward, particularly advantageous in Windows environments, benefiting from broad support accessibility. Teradata showcases strong deployment flexibility but requires specialized knowledge for setup. Customer feedback suggests SQL Server often provides a more user-friendly experience.

Pricing and ROI: SQL Server is generally viewed as more cost-effective, with lower initial setup costs and strong returns for small to medium-sized workloads. Teradata, despite higher initial costs, is seen as delivering substantial ROI for enterprises with high-volume data processing and complex analytical tasks. The pricing models and expected returns vary significantly based on organizational needs and scale.

To learn more, read our detailed SQL Server vs. Teradata Report (Updated: December 2024).

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SQL Server vs. Teradata

December 2024

Helped 823,875 peers since 2012

Categories and Ranking

SQL Server

Ranking in Relational Databases Tools

1st

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

266

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Teradata

Ranking in Relational Databases Tools

7th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Customer Experience Management (5th), Backup and Recovery (19th), Data Integration (18th), Data Warehouse (3rd), BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (10th), Marketing Management (6th), Cloud Data Warehouse (6th)

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2024, in the Relational Databases Tools category, the mindshare of SQL Server is 21.4%, down from 23.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Teradata is 5.3%, up from 4.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Relational Databases Tools

Featured Reviews

Kapil Dev Khatri

Database administrator at K electric

Helps monitor queries and identify which indexes need to be created in the databases

SQL Server is very simple due to its GUI, which is available for users. It allows for modifications and has execution plans available, along with options such as activity monitoring. This helps monitor queries and identify which indexes need to be created in the databases, tables, or columns to improve performance.

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SurjitChoudhury

Data engineer at Cocos pt

Offers seamless integration capabilities and performance optimization features, including extensive indexing and advanced tuning capabilities

We created and constructed the warehouse. We used multiple loading processes like MultiLoad, FastLoad, and Teradata Pump. But those are loading processes, and Teradata is a powerful tool because if we consider older technologies, its architecture with nodes, virtual processes, and nodes is a unique concept. Later, other technologies like Informatica also adopted the concept of nodes from Informatica PowerCenter version 7.x. Previously, it was a client-server architecture, but later, it changed to the nodes concept. Like, we can have the database available 24/7, 365 days. If one node fails, other nodes can take care of it. Informatica adopted all those concepts when it changed its architecture. Even Oracle databases have since adapted their architecture to them. However, this particular Teradata company initially started with its own different type of architecture, which major companies later adopted. It has grown now, but initially, whatever query we sent it would be mapped into a particular component. After that, it goes to the virtual processor and down to the disk, where the actual physical data is loaded. So, in between, there's a map, which acts like a data dictionary. It also holds information about each piece of data, where it's loaded, and on which particular virtual processor or node the data resides. Because Teradata comes with a four-node architecture, or however many nodes we choose, the cost is determined by that initially. So, what type of data does each and every node hold? It's a shared-no architecture. So, whatever task is given to a virtual processor it will be processed. If there's a failure, then it will be taken care of by another virtual processor. Moreover, this solution has impacted the query time and data performance. In Teradata, there's a lot of joining, partitioning, and indexing of records. There are primary and secondary indexes, hash indexing, and other indexing processes. To improve query performance, we first analyze the query and tune it. If a join needs a secondary index, which plays a major role in filtering records, we might reconstruct that particular table with the secondary index. This tuning involves partitioning and indexing. We use these tools and technologies to fine-tune performance. When it comes to integration, tools like Informatica seamlessly connect with Teradata. We ensure the Teradata database is configured correctly in Informatica, including the proper hostname and properties for the load process. We didn't find any major complexity or issues with integration. But, these technologies are quite old now. With newer big data technologies, we've worked with a four-layer architecture, pulling data from Hadoop Lake to Teradata. We configure Teradata with the appropriate hostname and credentials, and use BTEQ queries to load data. Previously, we converted the data warehouse to a CLD model as per Teradata's standardized procedures, moving from an ETL to an EMT process. This allowed us to perform gap analysis on missing entities based on the model and retrieve them from the source system again. We found Teradata integration straightforward and compatible with other tools.

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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

"The solution is easy to use, has rich feature sets, and is business-oriented."

"SQL Server is very scalable because we use it across a couple of different types of applications, such as micro-infrastructure setup and server farm."

"SQL Server is widely used and it's simple. You cannot do without Microsoft if you want to manage IT for a business customer."

"The product’s most valuable features are flexibility and scalability."

"I believe Always On is the most valuable feature. It's also easy to use and not very tricky."

"I have experience with this product for many years. I never have problems with it. It can handle a PC, and it can also handle huge data. It is fast and efficient."

"It's a very capable, efficient, price-performant OLAP server."

"The solution is very easy to use."

More SQL Server pros

"It's a pre-configured appliance that requires very little in terms of setting-up."

"It has a solid set of tools and consulting services."

"The data processing, clustering, and distributed computing are impressive."

"The most valuable features of Teradata are that it is a massively parallel platform and I can receive a lot of data and get the queries out correctly, especially if it's been appropriately designed. The native features make it very suitable for multiple large data tasks in a structured data environment. Additionally, the automation is very good."

"The product's scalability is great. Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."

"The two types of partitioning have been very significant for us - row and columnar partitioning."

"Teradata's capabilities enhance data management efficiency, support scalability, and contribute to faster query performance."

"Cuts time to process huge amounts of data with efficient analytical queries."

More Teradata pros

Cons

"The solution could improve by having more integration with other operating systems and other platforms."

"SQL Server has good performance, but it could be better."

"I would like the SQL Server to be able to provide cloud support. We use the solution with a Korean provider supporting only MySQL rather than Microsoft SQL Server, which would be preferable and cheaper. This would prevent us from having to pay for troubleshooting and hosting the server."

"Regarding integration, the solution works well for different courses without any issues. However, if we want to add machine learning and AI capabilities for business analytics, that's an area where improvements could be made."

"Security is an area that can be improved."

"I would like to have more replication scenarios."

"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."

"The interface of the tool has certain shortcomings, making it an area where improvements are required."

More SQL Server cons

"Teradata's UI could be more user-friendly."

"The solution could improve by having a cloud version or a cloud component. We have to use other solutions, such as Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, or Snowflake for the cloud."

"It would help to make scaling easier with a reduced cost. "

"I think the UI is not there yet. It could be improved by being more user-friendly."

"Teradata is an old data warehouse, and they're not improving in terms of new, innovative features."

"Teradata is somewhat late in adopting cloud technology."

"Apart from Control-M, it would be nice if it could integrate with other tools."

"The increasing volumes of data demand more and more performance."

More Teradata cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing price could be better, more user-friendly."

"There is a license required for this solution. One of the problems is for smaller businesses to purchases a license because it is expensive for a lot of them to afford."

"Some of our clients purchase the license and others do not, they use Express SQL Server."

"To scale the solution there are additional costs."

"The cost is high and because it's an expensive product, we are in the process of moving towards open-source solutions."

"Licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis."

"It's cheaper than Oracle."

"It is expensive, especially when you have open-source products that are just about as functional and they're free. They might want to consider re-evaluating their pricing. We purchased it in retail. It was somewhere in the neighborhood of 9,000. There is just the standard licensing fee. If they migrate this product the way they're trying to do everything else, eventually, it is going to be subscription-based, which is going to suck, but that's the way the industry is going, so it is what it is."

More SQL Server pricing and cost advice

"Teradata used to be expensive, but they have been lowering their prices."

"The product cost is high for what the client gets. There may be more cost-effective solutions for small and medium-sized organizations."

"Teradata is expensive but gives value for money, especially if you don't want to move your data to the cloud."

"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."

"We are looking for a more flexible cost model for the next version that we use, whether it be cloud or on-premise."

"The cost of running Teradata is quite high, but you get a good return on investment."

"I would advise others to look into migration and setup as a fixed price and incorporate a SaaS option for other Teradata services."

"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

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Comparison Review

it_user232068

Senior Data Architect at a pharma/biotech company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Aug 5, 2015

Netezza vs. Teradata

Original published at https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/should-i-choose-net Two leading Massively Parallel Processing (MPP) architectures for Data Warehousing (DW) are IBM PureData System for Analytics (formerly Netezza) and Teradata. I thought talking about the similarities and differences…

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

50%

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

25%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

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...

Comparing Teradata and Oracle Database, which product do you think is better and why?

I have spoken to my colleagues about this comparison and in our collective opinion, the reason why some people may declare Teradata better than Oracle is the pricing. Both solutions are quite simi...

Which companies use Teradata and who is it most suitable for?

Before my organization implemented this solution, we researched which big brands were using Teradata, so we knew if it would be compatible with our field. According to the product's site, the comp...

Is Teradata a difficult solution to work with?

Teradata is not a difficult product to work with, especially since they offer you technical support at all levels if you just ask. There are some features that may cause difficulties - for example,...

IBM Db2 Database vs SQL Server

Comparisons

SAP HANA vs SQL Server

Compared 16% of the time

MariaDB vs SQL Server

Compared 15% of the time

LocalDB vs SQL Server

Compared 11% of the time

Compared 10% of the time

Amazon Aurora vs SQL Server

Compared 6% of the time

More SQL Server Competitors

Oracle Exadata vs Teradata

Compared 14% of the time

Snowflake vs Teradata

Compared 8% of the time

MySQL vs Teradata

Compared 8% of the time

Vertica vs Teradata

Compared 5% of the time

Amazon Redshift vs Teradata

Compared 5% of the time

More Teradata Competitors

Product Reports

Download SQL Server product report

SQL Server

November 2024

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November 2024

Also Known As

Microsoft SQL Server, MSSQL, MS SQL

IntelliFlex, Aster Data Map Reduce, , QueryGrid, Customer Interaction Manager, Digital Marketing Center, Data Mover, Data Stream Architecture

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Microsoft

Overview

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 scalable data analytics platform designed to meet enterprise demands for large-scale data management and processing, focusing on performance, scalability, and security for complex query executions.

As a leading data warehousing solution, Teradata integrates advanced analytics enabling organizations to derive insights from massive datasets. It supports high-volume data workloads with its architecture optimized for analytical queries. Users benefit from its robust scalability, allowing seamless expansion as data grows. Teradata's SQL engine is compatible with a wide range of data types, ensuring flexibility in data analysis. With advanced security measures, it protects sensitive data across various environments, providing peace of mind to users handling critical information.

What are the most important features of Teradata?

Linear Scalability: Easily expands data processing capabilities to handle increasing data loads without performance degradation.
Advanced Analytics: Supports complex analytical operations integrating machine learning and AI for predictive insights.
SQL Compatibility: Offers a comprehensive SQL interface that supports complex queries across diverse data types.
Data Security: Implements rigorous security protocols to protect data integrity and confidentiality.

What benefits and ROI should users look for?

Improved Decision-Making: Derive actionable insights quickly for strategic business decisions.
Cost Efficiency: Optimized resource usage reduces operational costs associated with data processing.
Increased Productivity: Streamlined data operations save time, allowing teams to focus on analysis.
Enhanced Scalability: Seamless growth without significant additional investment as data volumes increase.

Teradata is widely used in industries like finance, telecommunications, and healthcare, where data-driven decisions are critical. Companies leverage its robust analytics capabilities to enhance customer experiences, streamline operations, and ensure compliance with regulatory requirements. In these sectors, quick access to data insights can significantly impact competitive advantage.

Sample Customers

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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