IBM Db2 Warehouse vs Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse comparison

IBM Db2 Warehouse vs. Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse

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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

IBM Db2 Warehouse

Ranking in Data Warehouse

11th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Microsoft Parallel Data War...

Ranking in Data Warehouse

10th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of IBM Db2 Warehouse is 2.6%, up from 1.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse is 1.1%, down from 1.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Data Warehouse

Featured Reviews

Sherpard Muzuva

Senior Technical Manager- IBM Enterprise Systems 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.

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Ashok Bhadra

Associate Director at Sequentis

Provides flexible data handling and integrates easily but requires less frequent patch releases

Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse keeps giving updates and new features. In my first consultancy, I transitioned a mortgage company from Oracle OBIEE to Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse to greatly reduce the mortgage approval time. There's a feature that allows users to set alerts on triggers within reports, enabling timely actions on pending applications and effectively reducing waiting time. It extracts data from the ERP system, and we are doing extensive data analytics. The system handles target marketing for a company which does 85 to 90% of its business in wholesale. We have a variety of clients from mom-and-pop stores to big box stores, and we have intermediaries. We sell through approximately 13 retail channels including Etsy, our retail website, Faire, Wayfair, and Walmart. Each channel requires different types of inventory updates and packaging, which is managed automatically. A significant amount of development is done on Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse where all these processes are automatically fed out and updated. We also conduct inventory analysis and aging analysis. We identify seasonal buyers, track their purchasing habits, and auto-trigger campaigns for them, sometimes offering discounts on various items. We've found that combining top-selling items with non-selling items can lead to increased sales, as people often buy additional items when they find one on sale.

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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

"Some of the best features are stored procedures, parallelism, and different indexing strategies."

"I think it scales really well and as long as you take enough time to learn a little bit about it, it works really well."

"It can scale effectively as long as resources are available."

"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."

"The analytics engine is not bad at forecasting predictions."

"Provides good security and reliability."

"IBM Db2 Warehouse is more resilient when dealing with business intelligence applications."

More IBM Db2 Warehouse pros

"The interface is very user-friendly."

"The data transmissions between the data models is the most valuable feature."

"Collecting the data through SSIS packages from different sources and putting them all in one data repository is the most powerful thing. While others have this feature, they don't have the simplicity or ease of use when getting a resource and knowing everything about it."

"The stability and ease of use of Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse are valuable features."

"The most valuable feature is the business intelligence (BI) part of it."

"Overall, I rate Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse a nine out of ten."

"It has allowed fast daily loads and analysis of millions of rows of data, which eventually moved to near real-time."

"Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse provides good firewall processing in terms of response time."

More Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse pros

Cons

"It takes a long time to have a new version or release, similar to Oracle."

"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."

"Lacks sufficient documentation and particularly in Spanish."

"IBM Db2 Warehouse needs to improve its interface."

"In terms of improvement, IBM Db2 Warehouse should be more scalable."

"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."

"The areas of the solution that is needing the most improvement are separating compute from storage, elasticity, which means scaling up and then retracting."

More IBM Db2 Warehouse cons

"Some compatibility issues occur during deployment, so we need to build the product from scratch for some features."

"SQL installation is pretty tricky. The scalability and customer support also should be improved."

"The solution is expensive and has room for improvement."

"Sometimes, the product requires rolling back to its previous version during a software update. This particular area could be enhanced."

"It could be made more user-friendly for business users which would increase the user base."

"We'd like to see it be a bit more compatible with other solutions."

"The reporting for certain types of data needs to be improved."

"A major issue is with table statistics. Sometimes the statistics are not refreshed correctly, which causes issues for us."

More Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"In a traditional on-prem database, in a data warehouse, the solution is probably on the expensive side."

"They offer an annual subscription. The pricing depends on the size of the environments."

"The solution's pricing is fairly decent for organizations with huge data sizes."

"I think the program is well-priced compared to the other offerings that are out in the market."

"Microsoft has an agreement with the government in our country, so our customers get their licensing costs from the Ministry. Whenever we work with any government, company, or government institute, which is mainly what we are doing, that license comes directly from the Ministry of Technology and Information."

"Technical support is an additional fee and is expensive."

"The tool could be expensive if we need to manage a lot of data."

"The solution is cost-effective."

"All the features that we use do not require any additional subscription or yearly fees."

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865,384 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

28%

Government

10%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

25%

Insurance Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

University

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about IBM Db2 Warehouse?

The standout feature of IBM Db2 Warehouse, which is particularly valuable for large enterprises, is its ability to handle big data.

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?

What do you like most about Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse?

Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse provides good firewall processing in terms of response time.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse?

Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse is very expensive.

What needs improvement with Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse?

The patch releases are a concern. For a customer with tons of servers, frequent patches lead to required reboots, which interrupts business. It would be better to release patches less frequently, m...

Snowflake vs IBM Db2 Warehouse

Comparisons

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Compared 22% of the time

Oracle Exadata vs IBM Db2 Warehouse

Compared 18% of the time

Magnitude vs IBM Db2 Warehouse

Compared 11% of the time

Amazon Redshift vs IBM Db2 Warehouse

Compared 9% of the time

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Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics vs Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse

Compared 41% of the time

Teradata vs Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse

Compared 37% of the time

Oracle Exadata vs Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse

Compared 22% of the time

More Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse Competitors

Product Reports

IBM Db2 Warehouse

Download IBM Db2 Warehouse product report

Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse

Download Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse product report

Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse report

Also Known As

InfoSphere Warehouse, IBM InfoSphere Warehouse

Microsoft PDW, SQL Server Data Warehouse, Microsoft SQL Server Parallel Data Warehouse, MS Parallel Data Warehouse

Overview

InfoSphere Warehouse is a suite of products that combines the strength of DB2 with a data warehousing infrastructure from IBM. You can use InfoSphere Warehouse to build a complete data warehousing solution that includes a highly scalable relational database, data access capabilities, and front-end analysis tools.

IBM

The traditional structured relational data warehouse was never designed to handle the volume of exponential data growth, the variety of semi-structured and unstructured data types, or the velocity of real time data processing. Microsoft's SQL Server data warehouse solution integrates your traditional data warehouse with non-relational data and it can handle data of all sizes and types, with real-time performance.

Microsoft

Sample Customers

Alameda County Social Services Agency, Sui Southern Gas Company Limited

Auckland Transport, Erste Bank Group, Urban Software Institute, NJVC, Sheraton Hotels and Resorts, Tata Steel Europe

IBM Db2 Warehouse vs. Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse