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Apache Spark vs Oracle Application Development Framework 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

Apache Spark
Ranking in Java Frameworks
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
69
Ranking in other categories
Hadoop (1st), Compute Service (6th)
Oracle Application Developm...
Ranking in Java Frameworks
8th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.0
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Java Frameworks category, the mindshare of Apache Spark is 11.8%, up from 8.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Oracle Application Development Framework is 7.0%, up from 3.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Java Frameworks Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Apache Spark11.8%
Oracle Application Development Framework7.0%
Other81.2%
Java Frameworks
 

Featured Reviews

Devindra Weerasooriya - PeerSpot reviewer
Data Architect at Devtech
Provides a consistent framework for building data integration and access solutions with reliable performance
The in-memory computation feature is certainly helpful for my processing tasks. It is helpful because while using structures that could be held in memory rather than stored during the period of computation, I go for the in-memory option, though there are limitations related to holding it in memory that need to be addressed, but I have a preference for in-memory computation. The solution is beneficial in that it provides a base-level long-held understanding of the framework that is not variant day by day, which is very helpful in my prototyping activity as an architect trying to assess Apache Spark, Great Expectations, and Vault-based solutions versus those proposed by clients like TIBCO or Informatica.
Asad Ur Rehman - PeerSpot reviewer
ERP Manager | Implementation Head at Tharsol
Eases the writing of code in Java with JavaBeans; easy to set up
My advice to anyone who intends to use ADF for the first time is that you must make sure that you have powerful enough hardware in order to run everything smoothly, especially when it comes to JDeveloper. If your hardware is adequate, you can get by without a problem in terms of speed, but be advised that it can use a lot of resources. However, even though ADF is a good product with great scalability that has really helped me out in hard times since 2014, I would ultimately recommend that new users look toward Oracle APEX instead of ADF. I would rate Oracle Application Development Framework a nine out of ten.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"AI libraries are the most valuable. They provide extensibility and usability. Spark has a lot of connectors, which is a very important and useful feature for AI. You need to connect a lot of points for AI, and you have to get data from those systems. Connectors are very wide in Spark. With a Spark cluster, you can get fast results, especially for AI."
"Organisations can now harness richer data sets and benefit from use cases, which add value to their business functions."
"It's a nice system for batch processing huge data."
"I feel the streaming is its best feature."
"There's a lot of functionality."
"The product’s most valuable feature is the SQL tool. It enables us to create a database and publish it."
"With Spark, we parallelize our operations, efficiently accessing both historical and real-time data."
"I like that Apache Spark can handle multiple tasks parallelly, and I also like the automation feature, while JavaScript helps with the parallel streaming of the library."
"The single sign-on features applied to Oracle Cloud is a valuable feature. All parts of this application are compatible with single sign-on, where you have a security feature that is very good in Oracle Cloud."
"The most valuable feature of the Oracle Application Development Framework is the rapid development and the security it provides."
"Oracle support is great, one of the best that I've seen."
"The best part of Oracle ADF is being able to easily write code in Java with JavaBean files."
"This is a product that I recommend."
"The most valuable feature is the ease of integration with other Oracle products."
"The most valuable features of this solution are the business components."
"The single sign-on features applied to Oracle Cloud is a valuable feature."
 

Cons

"If you have a Spark session in the background, sometimes it's very hard to kill these sessions because of D allocation."
"I do not know exactly what was the reason to move away from Apache Spark or the underlying database system, but it was simply a decision driven by the customer."
"Apache Spark provides very good performance The tuning phase is still tricky."
"Very often in many of my experiments, the data set has had to be partitioned, and there have been issues in handling very large data sets, with most of my work done using Python machine learning libraries, requiring chunking, and speed of prediction has been an issue of concern in some experiments where we have had to shut down processes due to CPU requirements, then restart with different Apache configurations, and resourcing support is a major determinant if I were to name a constraint in terms of running machine learning experiments."
"We've had problems using a Python process to try to access something in a large volume of data. It crashes if somebody gives me the wrong code because it cannot handle a large volume of data."
"The initial setup was not easy."
"It is useful for scientific purposes, but for commercial use of big data, it gives some trouble."
"Although you are able to perform complex transformations using Spark libraries, the support for SQL to perform transformations is still limited."
"Another downside with ADF is that, right now, no one is using it because everyone has moved to Oracle's APEX technology."
"I use JDeveloper along with ADF and, unfortunately, JDeveloper is a very slow tool. It takes a lot of time to accomplish things with it during both development and deployment. I hope that Oracle will improve JDeveloper to make it run faster."
"Oracle Application Development Framework is set to go out of support over the next three years but they should provide support for the solution for the longer term. Additionally, there needs to be more overall optimization and specifically in webpage rendering. The solution uses a lot of resources, and in order for them to move forward, they would have to create a smaller resource impact."
"Oracle ADF needs more components and the layout can be improved."
"The model layer could be improved for performance because once that part gets bloated, the performance is lacking. So, there is room for performance optimization."
"We have some problems with Oracle relative to third parties. Like in one project, there were some loopholes for hackers to penetrate through our main application."
"That's where I have issues with it. It's said that it's scalable, but I have found that it's a bit lacking in that department."
"Lacks tailoring to geographic regional differences and consistent integration with third parties."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Spark is an open-source solution, so there are no licensing costs."
"They provide an open-source license for the on-premise version."
"On the cloud model can be expensive as it requires substantial resources for implementation, covering on-premises hardware, memory, and licensing."
"Apache Spark is an expensive solution."
"The tool is an open-source product. If you're using the open-source Apache Spark, no fees are involved at any time. Charges only come into play when using it with other services like Databricks."
"The product is expensive, considering the setup."
"It is quite expensive. In fact, it accounts for almost 50% of the cost of our entire project."
"Considering the product version used in my company, I feel that the tool is not costly since the product is available for free."
"We have yearly licensing costs."
"The solution has an annual licensing cost and there are only standard fees. If you want Oracle support this is charged extra on top of the licensing fees."
"The cost of this solution is approximately $47,000 USD per site."
"Oracle ADF is an expensive product. I don't know the actual figures, but our licensing costs for the year 2020, for example, were very high."
"We use a lot of Oracle products and in total, we pay about £5 million ($6.1 million USD) per year."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
19%
Construction Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Construction Company
13%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business28
Midsize Enterprise16
Large Enterprise33
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise1
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Apache Spark?
Apache Spark is open-source, so it doesn't incur any charges.
What needs improvement with Apache Spark?
I find that there really lacks the technical depth to do any recommendations for future updates of Apache Spark. I used it for two years for our prototype work and testing things, but because I had...
What is your primary use case for Apache Spark?
I attempted to use Apache Spark in one of our customer projects, but after the initial test, our customer moved to another technology and another database system. I do not have any final remarks on...
Ask a question
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Also Known As

No data available
Oracle ADF
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

NASA JPL, UC Berkeley AMPLab, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo!, UC Santa Cruz, TripAdvisor, Taboola, Agile Lab, Art.com, Baidu, Alibaba Taobao, EURECOM, Hitachi Solutions
Financial Regulatory Authority (FRA) of Egypt, Red Samurai, ChB Jelly House
Find out what your peers are saying about Apache Spark vs. Oracle Application Development Framework and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
908,800 professionals have used our research since 2012.