SAP IQ Reviews

Sybase IQ is the only data warehousing (DWH) solution we use for reporting.

I've used it for eight years.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

7/10.

6/10 because at the time I was using it, Sybase Turkey were short on staff and not very experienced.

The product is very good as a DWH & Reporting tool. It is performing well on large tables for DML operations and queries.

We use SAP IQ primarily for data warehousing and business intelligence.

The most valuable features of the product are the column structure, speed, and compression. Partitioning is one of the most useful features with SAP IQ. It was something that they used to charge a lot for but it costs less now.

Actually, it is not the product that needs revision but the company itself. Sybase IQ was bought by SAP. They use it, but they don't really advertise and push it correctly. So SAP IQ — from a company standpoint — is not really supported correctly. If they did more to support the product, it would be a more popular solution.

SAP IQ has not introduced more integration with Hadoop so the two products would act in a more tightly coupled way. This would be one of the more important features that they might add. The integration with Hadoop is important because it seems everybody is going towards Hadoop for big data. You also need a system that works well. Hadoop is fast, but SAP IQ is even faster. They each have advantages, so if you can combine them, that would be good. It will work out better for cost and extra storage.

My impression from using the product over its lifetime is a little different than it is now. For IQ 16, the latest, the stability is actually quite decent. It got very, very stable. In the beginning, our implementation was slightly unstable because I changed the network to something similar to Aarna, so there were some issues because of all those changes. It was slightly unstable, but after some adjustments, it's really stable.

The product is very scalable. You can scale it upwards and sideways — that is by adding new hardware or working with software solutions. This is the only product I know which will allow you to do both.

Our company is slightly smaller than many with only about 100 users. Most probably there are more, but this is on average. It all depends on the business climate. 

Technical support for the product has become almost nonexistent for this product. There are no real agents because SAP let all the people go who were dedicated to the IQ project. Actually, I used to work for SAP. They let us all go. That's why I say there are not a lot of real experts in the SAP organization available for SAP IQ support. As far as I am concerned, that is a problem for users.

Personally, I've explored a lot of solutions. While it may not have been specifically for where I am working now, I stay aware of what is on the market. It only affects the current solution in that I am aware that there are other options, what their competitive advantages are, and features we might implement or emulate. 

For example, I've used Data Warehousing with Oracle, Dv2 also with Oracle and SQL Server. But I do not think that other products really have an advantage for warehousing over the SAP IQ solution. All of them that compete now seem to be Oracle Exadata, which is fast, but it is also very expensive. All the newer products seem to have columnized solutions as that is very advantageous for data warehousing. It is in order to compete with what SAP IQ already provided.

IQ's initial setup is relatively easy and is not that complex. The actual installation and deployment is a day or two. The biggest bottle-necks are normally encountered with the storage and having people who can configure and set up the storage correctly. The storage needs to conform to the parameters of SAP IQ. So, in reality, the time-delay is due to setting up the storage which is the big bottleneck for deployment. We can't blame the product itself.

We do our own setup and deployment.

Pricing changes. In South Africa, it depends on how the pricing is obtained. The pricing is good and it is actually better now because they are realizing that they should price it correctly according to the market. The pricing improved especially with the partitioning because they used to charge too much for that feature. They have now lowered that because obviously data warehouses get huge so when you use partitioning that it would get very expensive. It benefits people who have big databases.

As far as actual cost, there's a standard licensing fee and then there are the add-ons. The most useful and most expensive add-on was the partitioning. That's the only real additional cost that I've found useful. They also have got a high-security encryption module, but that's something that's very, very niche. So beyond the standard licensing you also have to factor in the cost of modular enhancements. But there aren't a lot of additional things you need to pay for in order to enhance what the base system does.

The only other add on that you would need to pay for is if you scale sideways. That is the multiplex which requires additional hardware.

Being in this business for a long time — now as a data architect — I've had the opportunity to use a few solutions and there are many more to research. There is a long list of products that I've worked with and evaluated. You might say that evaluation is constant but I am an expert with SAP IQ. None of the other products have capabilities that would make me suggest a shift.

In rating the product, I would give it at least an 8 out of ten. The only thing really needed to make it a ten out of ten for us and our usage is better support from the vendor. Well, I say better support but also better vision into the future. I do not think the company is doing sufficient work in development.

My advice for other people and companies considering this product as a solution is to find out if you can get proper support. I really think that's the biggest challenge facing people who use the product. The current company that owns the product, SAP, is very laid back about supporting the product.

It may be helpful to note that the solution does not require a lot of maintenance. We've really got only one or two DBAs looking after it and it is not even a full-time job. If you have a multiplex setup you may require more dedicated DBA staff for maintenance.

Once the setup is done correctly, the maintenance comes down to monitoring. There's not a lot of other effort involved in keeping things running.

• Data compression ratio
• Mass query speed

Sybase IQ, it's high compressed ratio and large query are attractive. In data warehouse experience that is a good tool and normal C/P.

We can now have over one billion rows in a table for semi-real trans-national querying. In quarterly or monthly report from billions of records, it supports and provides, stable performance.

• Admin UI
• Tuning parameters
• Maintenance tool
• UI

I've used it for over five years.

There weren't many issues.

Aborts happen, and we don't know why.

There aren't many issues.

5/10.

5/10.

We also have an Oracle solution, and these it runs in parallel with Sybase IQ.

We set it up in multi node mode, and it wasn't too complex.

We implemented with a vendor who were 6/10.

It's at about 60%.

They should simplify the classification of licenses, especially the core/store number.

• Oracle
• PostgreSQL

Take into consideration your multiplex environment and storage IOPS balance.

• Ability to load data from flat files very quickly
• Data compression
• Fast querying for aggregations

IQ has enabled our company to load data from our data vendors in under one hour and eliminated multiple copies and hours of processing time.

DR capabilities need to be improved. For instance, unlike SAP ASE, there is no ability to replicate from IQ to IQ.

I've used it for 10 years.

No issues were experienced during deployment, however, we hit performance issues on Solaris which were eliminated when we migrated to the Linux platform.

With various patches of v15.4 and v16.0, we had instances where the IQ server crashed under certain circumstances. The vendor has addressed most of the issues though.

None product-related and we were able to get around by tuning. Though as we add more data and more users we may have to consider IQ multiplex in the future.

7/10.

9/10.

We used ASE to store the data in IQ. We switched as IQ now allows us to centrally store the data in one place and in a compressed format.

It's straightforward; IQ is one of the easiest DBMS to install.

For our initial IQ server we had Sybase consultants, and we used them again for our migration to Linux. Their expertise was 7/10.

Hardware cost was the biggest savings, in the tens of thousands of dollars.

No, as since we had Sybase ASE we took their IQ product without evaluating any other options.

IQ is a niche product and is good for data storage with it's massive compression ability and adhoc querying. With the emergence of in-memory databases and MPP platforms (like Cassandra, HANA, Greenplum,etc.). I see IQ being used as more of a data store than interacting with the end users or apps if shops chose to use these new technologies.

The column architecture.

Analytical reporting has improved.

Sales and marketing – I just want to elaborate on this a little bit more. The product itself is the best in the industry, which I liked and would like to work with again. IT has a lot less maintenance to support the database and query performance is best; it's very easy to use.

Around 13+ years.

In older version of Sybase IQ we had a few issues, just like any other product, but as the maturity of the product has grown, we have had really good success with this product.

Not in the recent versions of Sybase IQ.

No issues encountered.

Customer service is great, as we have global support for this product from Asia, when we are working nights to fix problems or troubleshoot issues. They are with us all the time and it is a very good transition from US support to Asia and back as we try to solve the problems round the clock.

10/10.

I used Sybase ASE and Microsoft SQL server heavily as Microsoft started off based on Sybase ASE, I was really comfortable with it. In between we tried DB2 and Teradata in different occasions and we went back to Sybase IQ for our operational and Analytical needs

The initial setup at the very beginning of the early versions was a little complex but as time went on, it got better and better and very easy. As a DBA, supporting this system is the best.

All my implementations are in-house for our company and we had group of DBA’s and Unix Administrators who helped us along. Our implementation was on Sun Solaris.

Very high, cost of implementing and maintain is very low and once installed and up and running, things will be just fine.

This product is rightly priced, or even under priced, for what it can do and for sure costs much less than other RDBMS products and licensing. They have more than one model which could fit your organization size and they are more than happy to work with you on this.

• Oracle
• DB2
• Teradata

Come up with clear requirements and a problem statement and see what you are trying to solve with this new implementation. Look beyond current problems by at least three to five years and be proactive and addressing them. You also need your senior management to buy into your approach and budget constraints, otherwise it will be challenging to make it successful.

Valuable features for us include the compression, speed, fast response time, and easy object maintenance.

It has provided us with cube query and faster data upload time.

I think the universe should be part of the Sybase IQ tool set.

We have been using the solution for about 10 years.

Sybase IQ is very stable. However, during earlier stages when the server crashes, you need Sybase technical support to help you out.

We did not encounter any issues with scalability.

The experts on Sybase IQ were very few in number, but they were really knowledgeable.

I guess it is the price competition offered by other vendors that causes companies to migrate to other data warehouse databases.

This is one of the simplest tools to install and it is very easy to scale.

Negotiate based on the features required.

I was not involved with product evaluation. However, this was the tool I normally would recommend for Sybase archive solutions.

Evaluate, carry out benchmarks, and do an ROI before buying.

The column-based technologies (basically all the database for ITP) are used for SAP IQ. It is used as a column-based solution.

It's two things:

1. Highest performance on query. This is very notable. Let's say, yesterday I was doing some of the performance improvements on the SAP AC, where the query was running for one and a half hours. I am told the query is a one-store procedure while running for six hours, but in IQ the same thing is running for just four minutes. Also, in AC, if I'm having any raw base of solutions, the data is around 100GB. Yet with IQ's compression it will be 20GB. So, you have all savings on your disk.
2. Your performance is ultimate, and you have a column-based solution to solve all these problems. IQ has its own patented index. It has seven patented indices. It gives you the ultra performance. In the latest version of SAP IQ, you have an in memory solution called RLV (Raw Level Versioning). You can run your query, whatever you are running on the ASP, this will be also be on the IP, so no code changes are required. These are the ultimate performances I have seen on the SAP IQ.

Instead of having a PNO process at the end of the day, which was running forever (six hours) I moved the process into SAP IQ. Now, I am giving real time, or near real time, PNO. The portal runs for four minutes, rather than running for six hours, which is a performance improvement.

Yes. The room for improvement would be the marketing of the product, because this product is much better than advertised.

One of my colleagues was working with Adobe, where the Product Management team was using Hadoop. Hadoop was doing a performance test, let's say excessive performance, and X plus X was the performance improvement of the SAP IQ. Thus, SAP really has to really market this product very well because of its patented indexes. Because it's patented, the compression is even far better than SAP HANA. So, they have to improve it and its use, the RLV in memory solution. The RLV is there so they are currently using it just for keeping delta data. Instead, what I would recommend is, you have to take it into the next level and include it in memory data space and in memory database.

Almost six years.

Very stable. It is an excellent product. We are running it for one of the banks for the last six years. So, in there are the P&L, securities, lending, and borrowing for those business, and we are running it in SAP IQ. No stability issues last I checked.

No issues. It's ultimately a very good product.

Yeah. The support needs much improvement.

I would rate them a six out of 10.

Yeah, I was using a business solution SAP SD. SAP IQ is more powerful than SAP SD, and the customer service has to be much improved. It didn't have the radical help I am looking for nor the documentation.

It's too complex. This is concerning something that will change immediately. I have to search for a very long time to obtain something if I need it. It's like a big dictionary. But, in the end, I don't get anything. If you go to infocenter.sybase.com, there is only a very small search. You have a lot of information, but it's not useful for me. The data coming with the SAP planning portal is not user-friendly. That is one of the major issues, which I'm facing at this point of time.

Yes, definitely. We were evaluating the other products but when I came to SAP IQ, SAP IQ was the first column-based solution across the world. So, we moved to IQ, and IQ gave us the ASE performance. We have faced some issues, a little here and there, but with SAP IQ Information Lifecycle Management, we fixed all those problems, and it's still running and giving business to my bank in last 10 years. We are customers of SAP for this product and still this year we have renewed the product again.

Save for a 100% guarantee, you will get the performance you are looking for with SAP IQ. It is just not for a normal solution, but I recommend it if you have performance issues and you have a huge database of data, for that it is the best product. For these type of issues, I would operate SAP IQ, over even SAP HANA.

I would go for SAP IQ. I am a HANA person, but I will still recommend IQ over HANA.

• Performance
• Scalability
• Ease of deployment
• Usability
• Administration

In the organizations I have worked with, SAP Sybase IQ has been used successfully as a datawarehouse solution and as data store for ad hoc querying. It delivers performance and enormous scalability.

Training and marketing are two areas where improvements are needed.

I've used it for eight years.

SAP Sybase IQ is a product which can be deployed very easily on commodity hardware.

Not really. In normal functioning SAP Sybase IQ is extremely stable.

No. I have seen deployments of datawarehouses with tens of TB's in used space and they scaled very easily to multiple applications.

It has been good, but more can be done in this area.

It's good, 7/10.

It's straightforward in the hands of a junior level DBA. The installer is very easy to understand as long as the user has a understanding of architecture and layout of the database server.

It's been in-house.

Understand your requirements well in terms of performance, backup, and space requirements before picking the number of licenses. If IQ is being used in a virtual environment then probably a good understanding of licensing options in a virtual environment is needed. Recently SAP has introduced some new license options, but new users should review those options with the sales team.

Estimate the storage requirements, performance requirements, and the number of users during the planning phase. Review the documentation related to hardware sizing and best practices available on the SAP website. There is a hardware estimation guide too which helps in estimating the hardware requirements. Lastly, review the multiplexing option too and understand the implication of columnar storage in a database server.