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SAP HANA vs Spark SQL comparison

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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

SAP HANA
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
93
Ranking in other categories
Data Virtualization (2nd), Embedded Database (1st), Relational Databases Tools (3rd), Database Management Systems (DBMS) (3rd)
Spark SQL
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
Hadoop (5th)
 

Featured Reviews

Bassem Mohammed - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Application Manager at TBTD
Integrated business processes have improved real-time analytics and financial performance
Whether I or my customers utilize SAP HANA's real-time analytics depends on the data needed to be displayed, and then choosing how to transfer the data to the analytic object, data source, or database to be displayed in the reports. It may be near real-time, real-time, or running batch every day. There are tools for integration between third-party systems, such as OData or APIs from SAP to get in or push data to other systems. Support for both structured and unstructured data helps organizations unify data sources depending on the needed data to be displayed. There are many ways to store it for report displays, but structured data will be better than unstructured data.
Kemal Duman - PeerSpot reviewer
Team Lead, Data Engineering at Nesine.com
Data pipelines have run faster and support flexible batch and streaming transformations
We do not have any performance problems, but we do have some resource problems. Spark SQL consumes so many resources that we migrated our streaming job from Spark to Apache Flink. Resource management in Spark SQL should be better. It consumes more resources, which is normal. The main reason we switched from Spark is memory and CPU consumption. The major reason is the resource problem because the number of streaming jobs has been increasing in our company. That is why we considered resource management as a priority. Because of the resource consumption, I would say the development of Spark SQL is better. For development purposes, it is a top product and not difficult to work with, but resources are the major problem. We changed to Flink regardless of development time. Development time is less in Spark compared with Flink.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The best feature of SAP HANA is column computing. The computing speed of the solution is also very high, so developers can easily develop programs through SAP HANA."
"The benefits include high database loading performance, superior reporting performance, and ease of use."
"The latest version is very good, it's excellent."
"Technically it resembles Oracle, but as a somewhat lighter version."
"The solution operates well, and I had no problems with the functionality."
"I think the in-memory database is excellent as it boosts performance."
"The performance in terms of processing time is unmatched due to the in-memory processing capability."
"Provides us with predictive capabilities for asset maintenance, and real-time forecasts."
"One of Spark SQL's most beautiful features is running parallel queries to go through enormous data."
"This solution is a much more scalable and adventurous solution."
"Overall the solution is excellent."
"Spark SQL gives us a handful of methods to design queries based on its own syntax and also incorporates the regular SQL syntax within tasks."
"Data validation and ease of use are the most valuable features."
"It is a stable solution."
"Certain data sets that are very large are very difficult to process with Pandas and Python libraries. Spark SQL has helped us a lot with that."
"Spark SQL's efficiency in managing distributed data and its simplicity in expressing complex operations make it an essential part of our data pipeline."
 

Cons

"The price of the solution could be reduced, it is expensive."
"One notable issue is the difficulty in finding consultants with experience in the SuccessFactors product, a human resource management tool part of SAP's cloud-based solutions. For example, learning the Oracle database is straightforward. You can easily go to the Oracle website, download the database, install it on your laptop, and access technical resources and books."
"The initial setup was pretty complex, considering the enormous amount of data they had from an Oracle ERP."
"It's a complex initial setup."
"The setup process and deployment process for SAP HANA is complex."
"SAP HANA is not strong like Oracle when it comes to finance. They are only strong with the logistic business project."
"The documentation can be improved in the future."
"There are a few areas wherein there could be a patch upgrade, and that can cover up the country-specific payroll areas."
"Anything to improve the GUI would be helpful."
"Spark SQL consumes so many resources that we migrated our streaming job from Spark to Apache Flink."
"Being a new user, I am not able to find out how to partition it correctly. I probably need more information or knowledge. In other database solutions, you can easily optimize all partitions. I haven't found a quicker way to do that in Spark SQL. It would be good if you don't need a partition here, and the system automatically partitions in the best way. They can also provide more educational resources for new users."
"There are many inconsistencies in syntax for the different querying tasks like selecting columns and joining between two tables so I'd like to see a more consistent syntax."
"I've experienced some incompatibilities when using the Delta Lake format."
"In terms of improvement, the only thing that could be enhanced is the stability aspect of Spark SQL."
"The initial setup is a bit complex."
"This solution could be improved by adding monitoring and integration for the EMR."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There is an annual payment needed to use the solution."
"Price-wise, the product falls on the higher side of the spectrum. There is no need to pay for maintenance and support additionally. Support is available for bug fixes in the product."
"It is expensive."
"We pay annually for the license of the solution."
"The price of licensing is dependent on the size of the project, however, we have found that there is scope to negotiate the cost. If the solution is implemented on-premises there may be some extra costs for hosting etc."
"People who are technical will accept the cost, but financially they will assess whether this solution will bring them revenue or not. People often ask, how will I profit when the cost is so high?"
"The tool has a high price. I rate the solution’s pricing, one on a scale of ten, where one is expensive and ten is cheap."
"SAP HANA is affordable. I rate it a seven out of ten."
"The on-premise solution is quite expensive in terms of hardware, setting up the cluster, memory, hardware and resources. It depends on the use case, but in our case with a shared cluster which is quite large, it is quite expensive."
"We use the open-source version, so we do not have direct support from Apache."
"The solution is open-sourced and free."
"We don't have to pay for licenses with this solution because we are working in a small market, and we rely on open-source because the budgets of projects are very small."
"The solution is bundled with Palantir Foundry at no extra charge."
"There is no license or subscription for this solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Outsourcing Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business26
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise64
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise4
 

Questions from the Community

What are the biggest benefits of using SAP HANA?
Based on my work with SAP HANA, the biggest benefit that it can bring to your business is total data management. This product is by SAP - a company that serves almost all needs a client may have co...
Is SAP HANA’s customer and technical support reliable?
We have been using SAP HANA for a fairly short period of time and have only taken advantage of their customer support. So far, we have not had issues that required specialized help from technical s...
Is SAP HANA difficult to set up and start using?
SAP HANA is fairly easy to set up, however, I do not think a complete beginner can do it. You certainly need some preparation - either you need to have experience with similar solutions, or with ot...
What needs improvement with Spark SQL?
We do not have any performance problems, but we do have some resource problems. Spark SQL consumes so many resources that we migrated our streaming job from Spark to Apache Flink. Resource manageme...
What is your primary use case for Spark SQL?
Spark SQL has been in our stack for less than one year, though some of our colleagues are using it. It is a useful product for transformation jobs. We generally use Spark SQL for batch processing. ...
What advice do you have for others considering Spark SQL?
Regarding the Catalyst query optimizer, I think we are using it. We were using it in the past, but I am not certain if we use it now. We used it a long time ago. I rate my experience with Spark SQL...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

SAP High-Performance Analytic Appliance, HANA
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Unilever, NHS 24, adidas Group, CHIO Aachen, Hamburg Port Authority (HPA), Bangkok Airways Public Company Limited
UC Berkeley AMPLab, Amazon, Alibaba Taobao, Kenshoo, Hitachi Solutions
Find out what your peers are saying about SAP HANA vs. Spark SQL and other solutions. Updated: October 2026.
915,341 professionals have used our research since 2012.