SAP IQ Reviews

Our usual use cases for SAP IQ is that we have a Software-as-a-Service architecture where this database is the foundation for our SAP BusinessObjects platform. This is where it's getting its data from. That is how we use it.

The most valuable feature of SAP IQ for us is that it works very effectively with the SAP BusinessObjects which we use it with.

When it comes to SAP IQ, the areas that could be improved or enhanced include the error messaging and the locking capabilities, as that's where we often encounter problems. When there is an issue, the error messaging we get is not always sufficient to do a fast and solid fix. That's definitely something we could use better, along with how the locking functionality works. The locks are difficult to traverse.

I have been working with SAP IQ for almost 10 years in some capacity.

When there is a problem with SAP IQ, it's usually not the application itself. It's usually something external, such as lack of disk space or problems arising from the integration to other systems.

When there is a problem with SAP IQ, it's usually not the application itself. It's usually something external, such as lack of disk space or problems arising from the integration to other systems.

SAP IQ is actually quite effective when it comes to scalability. We have a setup that's built with multiple servers involved and that seems to be working fairly efficiently. If we wanted to add more servers into this entire setup, that would be fairly easy, so it's rather good when it comes to scalability.

I often communicate with the technical support and customer service of SAP IQ, and it has not been very impressive.

In my interaction with SAP IQ's technical support, the people we are talking to don't know this application very thoroughly. The guidance we get is very basic on the level we know ourselves. It seems very difficult to get proper advanced assistance on advanced or complicated problems.

Neutral

Before SAP IQ, I did not use a different solution for the same use cases, as in this architecture it has always been IQ.

SAP IQ is deployed on-premise in my organization.

Before choosing SAP IQ, I do not know if other options or vendors were evaluated, as that occurred more than 10 years ago before I came to the company. I really hope they did.

I do not use SAP IQ's machine learning capabilities.

I cannot assess the benefit of SAP IQ's distributed query processing for complex queries, as I am a non-technical operator.

I am not sure if we use SAP IQ's data compression features. I think the compression we are doing is on the data storage level and not on the database level. I believe we do not use it, but I'm not certain.

We do not utilize SAP IQ's support for unstructured data, as we do not have unstructured data.

I do not have any strong opinions on SAP IQ's security features such as data encryption. It's not been something that has been much in focus, neither in our choice of the platform, nor in our daily operations. I guess they're satisfactory as they have not been a problem.

I am not aware of the pricing and licensing of SAP IQ, as it's part of a bigger agreement, and I'm not the owner of that agreement.

My impression is that SAP IQ is a rather expensive tool in terms of value for money.

On a scale of 1-10, I rate SAP IQ a 7.

My use cases for SAP IQ revolve around our data warehouse, specifically the enterprise data warehouse.

The feature I appreciate the most about SAP IQ is the compression, which is very good; we cannot compare with any other type of EDW. The compression ratio is impressive, and unlike other RDBMS, this is a columnar database. It's not row-based, so that feature for fetching the information is very quick. We can get historical data quickly, and you can fetch information very quickly because every column is indexed. That is a feature of SAP IQ, so if you have any historical data that you want to maintain, this product can be utilized for that purpose.

The downside of SAP IQ, from what I understood from the management side, is that the front end for the DBA, for the admin, is not that user-friendly. If you compare it with SQL Server Management Studio, it is not that user-friendly GUI for the admin. But the engine is very strong and powerful.

It is easy to deploy SAP IQ; the implementation and installation are easy. The downside I see is that it doesn't allow most integrated backups; many of the marketplace players such as NetBackup, those software integrated backups are not available. So, if you want to take a backup, you need to take it locally, and then only you can back it up to any storage or anything. Those features such as integrated backup, which would allow it to stripe into an appliance or something similar, are not present.

One thing I notice as a downside is that if the CPU utilization is very high, there is no direct way we can find out which query is taking the most CPU. In any other RDBMS, there are DMVs available to find out which query is taking most of the CPU, but those features are not present in SAP IQ. If our CPU is hitting at 100%, it is not easy to identify which connection is taking the most CPU.

I have experience using SAP IQ in my career.

We used to contact support based on issues such as memory adjustment, connection parameters, or disk-related errors; those things are Business As Usual tasks, and for major issues, we never contacted support.

SAP IQ has multiple options for scalability with two options: Simplex and Multiplex. We can span the read and write load into multiple nodes, and that scalability is there. It's an inbuilt feature, and you can change it from Multiplex to Simplex as that is available with the product, and it's not complex.

The quality of support from SAP is very good; if it's a known problem, they will have a knowledge base, so we will get immediate assistance. So far, we didn't face any critical incidents, and whatever case had happened, we got immediate solutions from the vendor.

I rate SAP IQ support a seven on a scale from one to ten.

I have not used any alternatives to SAP IQ because when you want to change, many things need to be changed. Not only SAP IQ but also the source systems and many other things. It's challenging because once you are with one EDW, it's not easy to migrate to another system, so we never considered doing that.

It is easy to deploy SAP IQ; the implementation and installation are easy.

We have a local partner which deals with SAP; we don't directly deal with them. I don't want to disclose much because it's official, but there is a local partner in the Middle East, and we are dealing with them as they interact with SAP.

I have rated SAP IQ a 6 out of 10. SAP can contact me about this review if they have any questions or comments. The marketing department at SAP can contact me as I am interested in being a reference for them.

It's used for reporting purposes. We can quickly pull in large volumes of records.

It's a columnar database, so pulling records is easy. This makes it simple to generate reports and analyze data, such as tracking the growth of records.

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.

I have been using it for nine years. 

It's not as stable as HANA, but it can handle data. However, under high load and capacity, it's not that stable.

It is a scalable product. 

In the last three years, I'm not sure how IQ support is, but before that, there were very few technical experts available.

The initial setup is easy, but there is very little documentation available.

Even for small issues, we need to search extensively.

It's not that costly. So, the pricing is cheap. 

It is not easy for a beginner to learn to use SAP IQ.

Overall, I would rate it a seven out of ten because there are still a lot of things to improve. 

I implemented the creation of new databases and migration of data in both production and development environments using IQ. It is a columnar database and a very transactional one. We also competed with Teradata Base. In IQ, this same transaction is executed in 30 seconds.

With IQ, a transaction that previously took three days to execute can now be completed in thirty seconds.

IQ is a very high-performance and high-transaction database. It offers options for in-memory storage and high compression levels.

The only negative aspect of IQ is the cost, which can be challenging for companies in Peru.

I have worked with it for maybe ten or 20 years.

With IQ, we were able to handle millions of data and simultaneous transactions. It is very stable.

The scalability is very easy since the implementation can be done in a PC or server.

The customer service is difficult as there is no commercial response or specialists available for this product in Peru.

Positive

The setup is very easy and not complicated.

I worked in a company that was a partner five years ago, however, this partnership has since ended.

Currently, I don't have authorization for reselling the IQ product, so I cannot comment on the return on investment.

The cost of implementation is about $3,000. However, the cost is not much compared to the performance benefits.

Teradata Base. We competed with IQ and Teradata, where Teradata took two minutes for the same transaction that IQ completed in thirty seconds.

IQ is an excellent product. I do not understand why SAP does not make it more commercially available or supported.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. 

We are using SAP IQ as secondary storage for our SAP systems.

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.

The solution works best when combined with other SAP solutions. If the environment has other systems other options might be better.

I have been using SAP IQ for approximately 15 years.

SAP IQ is highly stable. It has been running for years with more data and we have not had any problems.

The scalability of SAP IQ is not scalable in itself. It is software that is used to store data in the SAP NFS. You can expand the storage as much as you want. The top layer of the application continues to run. The solution is scalable in the sense that the storage units where we keep the data can expand.

We have approximately 15 people that use the solution from our SAP BW and other teams.

I have not connected the support from SAP IQ.

The initial setup of SAP IQ is easy. We implemented our SAP NLS, which uses SAP IQ, along with SAP BW. We did the setup and we worked very closely with the SAP BW system. The whole implementation process is manageable.

SAP IQ closely resembles OpenText, which I use in conjunction with the SAP ECC ERP system. However, for BW, I utilize SAP NLS instead of OpenText, which functions as a storage unit for my data. The process is straightforward as I move the data from SAP HANA to NLS. Generally, there isn't much activity with SAP NLS, and I only retrieve data from it occasionally upon request. It isn't a system that presents any daily challenges, and mostly, it remains inactive, managing my legacy data in the background. Overall, I'm satisfied with its performance, and I don't have any current plans to modify the system.

We are using SAP IQ because it was available from SAP to support archiving. SAP BW, was SAP NLS. They never recommended an OpenText or there was no path to archiving in SAP BW. The standard setters use SAP NLS and SAP NLS runs on SAP IQ.

My advice to others is if they have SAP BW, then they should use SAP IQ, but if they have SAP BW, but have other SAP systems that might not need SAP IQ, they can look for other options.

I rate SAP IQ a seven out of ten.

Overall the solution is easy to use and highly stable.

I worked on implementing new databases, migration data in production, and developer environments with SAP IQ.

Implementing IQ transformed a transaction that initially took three days to execute to completing in just thirty seconds.

SAP IQ is a columnar database with high performance and high transactional capabilities. All data is compressed and indexed, allowing for fast execution of transactions.

The primary negative aspect is the cost, which can be a challenge due to the economic conditions in Peru.

I worked with SAP Adaptive Server Interface about ten or 20 years ago.

SAP IQ is stable with the ability to manage millions of data and transactions simultaneously.

Scalability is very easy, with implementations possible on both PCs and server machines.

There are challenges with customer support and a lack of specialists in SAP IQ.

Positive

We are in competition with Teradata Base. I have experience working with SQL Anywhere and PowerDesigner.

The initial setup of SAP IQ is not complicated and is very easy to implement and operate.

IQ implementation costs about three thousand dollars. It's less expensive compared to alternatives like Teradata Base in terms of transactional efficiency.

We compared performance with Teradata Base, which takes two minutes for the same transaction that IQ completes in thirty seconds.

SAP IQ is an excellent product, and I regret that it is no longer supported.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

We use the solution to secure and install databases and test networking tools.

The solution allows a high number of concurrent users. It enables Petabyte-Scale Data Warehousing. It's a column-oriented database management system. It can be used as a data mart. The product is easy to learn.

The tool gets stuck sometimes. The databases freeze suddenly during testing.

I have been using the solution for three years.

The product is stable.

We have more than five users in our organization.

The installation takes too much time. The ease of setup depends on the version we install and the platform we use.

My organization provides a binary service to test environments. I recommend that others use the tool. Overall, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.

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.

Column-based, petabyte scale, relational database software system used for business intelligence, data warehousing, and data marts.

My client is a into agri business, so it helps them get the best analysis.

Concurrency and functional error messaging.

Five years.

A production database server should never crash in response to user input, but Sybase IQ has repeatedly done that for us, over multiple revisions of the product.

No.

Average.

No.

Straightforward.

Simplify the classification of licenses, especially the core/store number.

SSAS and Oracle.

Make sure you can back it up, load data from a local host and do real load tests. The performance is amazing, but the stability issues, and the expense of the product, coupled with less than top-tier technical support, should be considered when evaluating the product for your specific environment.

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.