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

Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse vs Oracle Autonomous Data 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

Microsoft Parallel Data War...
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
40
Ranking in other categories
Data Warehouse (9th)
Oracle Autonomous Data Ware...
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Data Warehouse (13th)
 

Featured Reviews

HassanFatemi - PeerSpot reviewer
CEO at Smart Data-Driven Solutions
Has handled large volumes of data effectively but still needs cost flexibility
There could be improvements on the cost side of Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse because it is still considered to be quite expensive by a lot of users, and many companies are not interested in solutions with parallel data warehousing due to this expense. Addressing the cost would be the number one area for improvement. Additionally, I have not worked recently with it, so I don't know if this feature already exists, but if it doesn't, having an elastic feature that adjusts the service's power dynamically based on the workload would be beneficial instead of fixing the power at a specific level.
Kwajah Mohiuddin - PeerSpot reviewer
Global Head of Architecture at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Provides self-repair features, but the setup is complex
We use the product for online applications. We use it in the financial industry The product has self-repair features. The tool tunes itself. It separates compute from storage. We can scale storage and compute separately. The setup is complex. Oracle is a complex tool. I have been using Oracle…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Everything about the solution is great."
"The biggest advantage of Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse is the possibility to stop or pause the service because it can be very expensive, and the ability to pause the service when I don't use it is probably the main feature, along with the possibility to handle huge amounts of data, which is quite an interesting capability of the service."
"I am very satisfied with the customer service/technical support."
"The UI is very simple and functional for my clients, most of the clients that use the solution are not experts."
"With PDW’s Massively Parallel Processing (MPP) design, queries run in minutes instead of hours, and in seconds instead of minutes in comparison to Symmetric Multi-Processing (SMP) databases."
"MPP processing gives us the ability to distribute large data sets across nodes."
"The most valuable features are the performance and usability."
"The most valuable feature for me is querying."
"It is an extremely scalable solution since you can dynamically change the resources as some other cloud solutions."
"The product is easy to use."
"The solution is used for analytics and it works for our data security needs."
"I really like the auto-tuning, auto-scaling, and the automatic load balancing and query tuning in the system."
"The solution is self-securing. All data is encrypted and security updates and patches are applied automatically both periodically and off-cycle."
"It is a stable and scalable solution."
"I like the fact that the solution is self-patching, that it's running machine-learning generally across its logs all the time in order to identify any issues and to self-repair."
"I loved the simplicity of loading the data and simply relying on the self-tuning capabilities of ADW."
 

Cons

"We'd like to see it be a bit more compatible with other solutions."
"They need to incorporate a machine learning engine."
"More tools to help designers should be included."
"The initial setup of this solution is complex and can be improved."
"Some compatibility issues occur during deployment, so we need to build the product from scratch for some features."
"The patch releases are a concern. For a customer with tons of servers, frequent patches lead to required reboots, which interrupts business."
"​Concurrent queries are limited to 32, making it more of a data storage mechanism instead of an active DWH solution."
"I think that the error messages need to be made more specific."
"It is good as data warehouses go, but it is not that good for really big data."
"Oracle Autonomous Data Warehouse is not available as an on-premises solution."
"The setup is complex."
"My main suggestion for Oracle is the configuration and key values that come for JSON files. When we create a table, especially if you see in our RedShift or some other stuff, if I create a table on top of a JSON file with multiple array columns or superset columns, those column values create some difficulty in Oracle."
"The initial setup was pretty complex. It was not easy."
"The solution lacks visibility options."
"One of the major problem is creating custom tablespace."
"It is very important the integration with other platforms be made to be as easy as it is with an on-premises deployment."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"All the features that we use do not require any additional subscription or yearly fees."
"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 solution is cost-effective."
"They offer an annual subscription. The pricing depends on the size of the environments."
"The tool could be expensive if we need to manage a lot of data."
"ROI is high."
"The cost is perfect with Oracle Universal credit."
"We pay approximately $70,000 per month. The cost includes maintenance and support."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is a low price and ten is a high price, I rate the pricing an eight."
"In terms of architecture and pricing structure, I feel it is a little bit costly compared to Azure. It's fine compared to RedShift, but compared to Azure, it's a bit pricey when you calculate for one TB storage plus around five hours of reporting with the frequency of 1TB data. The cost adds up, making Oracle a bit expensive."
"Cloud solutions are cheaper, but in the long run, they may not be much cheaper. They certainly have a lower initial cost. The licensing is yearly, and it is based on the size of the hardware and the number of users."
"Oracle Autonomous Data Warehouse's pricing is fair and reasonable compared to the other cloud vendors."
"The price depends on the configuration we choose."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Cloud Data Warehouse solutions are best for your needs.
909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
24%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Media Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise22
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise11
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse?
The pricing could be better; I think it actually just went up.
What is your primary use case for Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse?
The basic use case for us is virtual machines. In real estate, we use it for our operations. They handle large data sets well, and the performance is good during those times.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Oracle Autonomous Data Warehouse?
We pay approximately $70,000 per month. The cost includes maintenance and support.
What needs improvement with Oracle Autonomous Data Warehouse?
Optimization should be better. The SQLs are sometimes very slow. I also noticed that Java is not supported, which is not ideal.
What is your primary use case for Oracle Autonomous Data Warehouse?
We are using Oracle Autonomous Data Warehouse for analytics in my company.
 

Also Known As

Microsoft PDW, SQL Server Data Warehouse, Microsoft SQL Server Parallel Data Warehouse, MS Parallel Data Warehouse
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Auckland Transport, Erste Bank Group, Urban Software Institute, NJVC, Sheraton Hotels and Resorts, Tata Steel Europe
Hertz, TaylorMade Golf, Outront Media, Kingold, FSmart, Drop-Tank
Find out what your peers are saying about Snowflake Computing, Teradata, Google and others in Cloud Data Warehouse. Updated: August 2026.
909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.