No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

Databricks vs IBM Db2 Warehouse 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

Databricks
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
94
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Data Warehouse (4th), Data Science Platforms (1st), Data Management Platforms (DMP) (5th), Streaming Analytics (1st)
IBM Db2 Warehouse
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
Data Warehouse (13th)
 

Featured Reviews

SimonRobinson - PeerSpot reviewer
Governance And Engagement Lead
Improved data governance has enabled sensitive data tracking but cost management still needs work
I believe we could improve Databricks integration with cloud service providers. The impact of our current integration has not been particularly good, and it's becoming very expensive for us. The inefficiencies in our implementation, such as not shutting down warehouses when they're not in use or reserving the right number of credits, have led to increased costs. We made several beginner mistakes, such as not taking advantage of incremental loading and running overly complicated queries all the time. We should be using ETL tools to help us instead of doing it directly in Databricks. We need more experienced professionals to manage Databricks effectively, as it's not as forgiving as other platforms such as Snowflake. I think introducing customer repositories would facilitate easier implementation with Databricks.
Sherpard  Muzuva - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Technical Manager at SYSTEMS INTEGRATED LTD (SYMPHONY)
Advanced features enhance business intelligence, but complex management calls for improved user guidance
While my experience with IBM Db2 Warehouse is somewhat limited, when compared to other databases such as Oracle, there are areas for improvement. They need to enhance the database to make it more user-friendly and easier to master. They should implement a more comprehensive graphical user interface with additional features. For instance, when users encounter problems, the system should provide better guidelines and troubleshooting directions, except for hardware-related issues. They need to implement tools that would help users perform basic troubleshooting rather than solely relying on support. Other databases have features where users can investigate specific issues using error codes. From my experience, many minor issues could be resolved before escalating to support.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Prior to using Azure Databricks in the cloud, we had Databricks installed in clusters, and since our implementation, the performance has increased and our cost has been reduced."
"The integration with Python and the notebooks really helps."
"The initial setup is pretty easy."
"Databricks allowed us to go from non-existent insights (because the datasets were just too large) to immediate and rich insights once the datasets were ingested into our PySpark notebooks."
"The solution is very easy to use."
"Databricks is definitely a very stable product and reliable."
"I would rate them ten out of ten."
"The solution is very simple and stable."
"The initial setup was really easy; it's Docker compliant, you just pull the image from the IBM repository and that's it, and the deployment must have taken less than an hour, making it really fast to have it completely working."
"Provides good security and reliability."
"Some of the best features are stored procedures, parallelism, and different indexing strategies."
"It can scale effectively as long as resources are available."
"It's easy and practical to use."
"It can be mounted on the cloud, which is a huge plus. If the client, for example, starts small with on-premise deployment and then it rapidly needs to grow, we can transfer this to the cloud easily."
"The solution is stable."
"If you have good people designing how the data is stored, it's a marvelous tool."
 

Cons

"In the future, I would like to see Data Lake support. That is something that I'm looking forward to."
"This solution only supports queries in SQL and Python, which is a bit limiting."
"It would be very helpful if Databricks could integrate with platforms in addition to Azure."
"I would like it if Databricks made it easier to set up a project."
"When I used the support, I had communication problems because of the language barrier with the agent. The accent was difficult to understand."
"Implementation of Databricks is still very code heavy."
"I think the automatic categorization of variables needs to be improved; the current functionality is not always efficiently identifying the features of the data that is collected."
"Data governance should be addressed. We have some trouble connecting all the governance solutions with Databricks, which means the integrative capabilities are problematic."
"I previously used DataStage, which I think is better than InfoSphere Warehouse."
"Lacks sufficient documentation and particularly in Spanish."
"IBM Db2 Warehouse needs to improve its interface."
"It takes a long time to have a new version or release, similar to Oracle."
"The areas of the solution that is needing the most improvement are separating compute from storage, elasticity, which means scaling up and then retracting."
"The primary challenges customers face with IBM Db2 Warehouse are related to its complexity in usage. It requires highly skilled professionals who understand Db2, and both training and support are challenging to obtain."
"There were some initial challenges with IBM Db2 Warehouse about eight months ago when I worked in this environment. When I coordinated with IBM support, they mentioned that the memory was insufficient for our needs. Our business environment required significantly more memory than the previous cluster could provide. Consequently, we have worked closely with on-site IBM technical personnel to address this issue."
"On a scale of one to ten, I would rate the technical support as a five. It is fairly bad."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Price-wise, I would rate Databricks a three out of five."
"I rate the price of Databricks as eight out of ten."
"The price is okay. It's competitive."
"I would rate the tool’s pricing an eight out of ten."
"We only pay for the Azure compute behind the solution."
"The solution is based on a licensing model."
"The licensing costs of Databricks depend on how many licenses we need, depending on which Databricks provides a lot of discounts."
"The cost for Databricks depends on the use case. I work on it as a consultant, so I'm using the client's Databricks, so it depends on how big the client is."
"In a traditional on-prem database, in a data warehouse, the solution is probably on the expensive side."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Cloud Data Warehouse solutions are best for your needs.
902,988 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
7%
Healthcare Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
27%
Construction Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Government
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business27
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise57
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise5
 

Questions from the Community

Which do you prefer - Databricks or Azure Machine Learning Studio?
Databricks gives you the option of working with several different languages, such as SQL, R, Scala, Apache Spark, or Python. It offers many different cluster choices and excellent integration with ...
How would you compare Databricks vs Amazon SageMaker?
We researched AWS SageMaker, but in the end, we chose Databricks. Databricks is a Unified Analytics Platform designed to accelerate innovation projects. It is based on Spark so it is very fast. It...
Which would you choose - Databricks or Azure Stream Analytics?
Databricks is an easy-to-set-up and versatile tool for data management, analysis, and business analytics. For analytics teams that have to interpret data to further the business goals of their orga...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Db2 Warehouse?
The pricing for medium and large environments is almost the same as Oracle. I rate the pricing as six out of ten.
What needs improvement with IBM Db2 Warehouse?
While my experience with IBM Db2 Warehouse is somewhat limited, when compared to other databases such as Oracle, there are areas for improvement. They need to enhance the database to make it more u...
What is your primary use case for IBM Db2 Warehouse?
The main advantages of IBM Db2 Warehouse become apparent when dealing with business intelligence applications. I worked with it when it was installed for one of our customers, a utilities company, ...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Databricks Unified Analytics, Databricks Unified Analytics Platform, Redash
InfoSphere Warehouse, IBM InfoSphere Warehouse
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Elsevier, MyFitnessPal, Sharethrough, Automatic Labs, Celtra, Radius Intelligence, Yesware
Alameda County Social Services Agency, Sui Southern Gas Company Limited
Find out what your peers are saying about Snowflake Computing, Teradata, Google and others in Cloud Data Warehouse. Updated: June 2026.
902,988 professionals have used our research since 2012.