SAP HANA vs SQLite comparison

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SAP HANA

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 13, 2025

SQLite and SAP HANA are both database management systems with different target markets. SAP HANA has the upper hand for enterprise-level operations due to its high-performance real-time analytics capabilities.

Features: SQLite is known for its self-contained architecture, serverless design, and ease of use, making it ideal for mobile and small-scale applications. SAP HANA's notable features include in-memory processing, high-speed analytics, and comprehensive data management suitable for high-volume enterprise tasks.

Room for Improvement: SQLite could enhance its capabilities with more advanced features for extensive data processing and enterprise support. It would benefit from better scalability solutions. SAP HANA could reduce its complexity in setup and offer more cost-effective solutions for smaller enterprises. Improvements in user-friendliness would help in wider adaptability, especially for those new to enterprise databases. Additionally, better integration with non-SAP applications could broaden its applicability.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: SQLite has a simple deployment process due to its minimalistic architecture and requires minimal setup, making it cost-effective with low maintenance needs. SAP HANA's deployment is more complex, requiring a sophisticated IT infrastructure but offers extensive support and services catering to complex enterprise needs.

Pricing and ROI: SQLite features minimal setup costs and provides a quick return on investment for applications requiring basic database functionalities. SAP HANA, while involving significant initial investment, delivers robust ROI through powerful analytics and extensive data operations, offering significant value for large-scale data environments despite its higher cost.

To learn more, read our detailed SAP HANA vs. SQLite Report (Updated: September 2025).

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SAP HANA vs. SQLite

September 2025

Helped 867,370 peers since 2012

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

Ranking in Embedded Database

4th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Data Virtualization (2nd), Relational Databases Tools (3rd)

SQLite

Ranking in Embedded Database

1st

Average Rating

7.2

Reviews Sentiment

5.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Open Source Databases (13th)

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Embedded Database category, the mindshare of SAP HANA is 9.2%, down from 9.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SQLite is 27.4%, down from 30.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Embedded Database Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
SQLite	27.4%
SAP HANA	9.2%
Other	63.400000000000006%

Embedded Database

Featured Reviews

Dhiraj Jankar

Senior SAP Basis Consultant at Capgemini

Users appreciate the mix of in-memory architecture and ease of backend management

The most valuable SAP HANA features are that, compared to Oracle, there is less administrative work and less complex work to handle, making it very straightforward. The tool itself takes care of the backend work. The main benefits SAP HANA provides to users include its architecture, which combines both column store and row store capabilities. Some places find the row feature important, whereas others find column store important. It allows some tables to be stored in a column base, others in a row base, and the In-Memory functionalities are mostly the highlight of SAP HANA, especially compared to disk-based memory users. This was the main reason SAP HANA was introduced initially.

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Neeraj Tiwari

Student at Queens University Belfast

Pretty easy to execute my SQL queries but issues while uploading and importing my dataset

It was a bit easy to use compared to other tools. It's simple. I found it pretty easy to execute my SQL queries. Since I was a beginner, it was comfortable for me to learn SQL using SQLite. However, when I used it for my professional work and for my assignments, I found some complications. Maybe I'm not proficient with it, that's why. The main benefit for me was learning. Since I was new to SQL, SQLite helped me understand how to work with structured data.

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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

"SAP HANA is vertically and horizontally scalable."

"The functionality is of the solution is very good."

"The feature that I like the most is that we can transport the data to our web data application. SAP HANA's performance is really perfect. We're working on big data, and SAP HANA is really working on high performance. We are happy working with it."

"The in-memory computing and the efficient response time are very good features."

"The solution offers advanced features that the company was struggling to implement."

"We like that the product is both vertically and horizontally scalable, allowing us to do around 86 percent compression of documentation from 50 to seven terabytes."

"The solution is stable."

"The benefits include high database loading performance, superior reporting performance, and ease of use."

More SAP HANA pros

"The product is lightweight and highly scalable."

"I use Flutter Technology with the JSF plugin."

"Sometimes, you want data to persist within the app even when there's no internet connectivity. To avoid showing blank screens, we can use SQLite to store data locally and then sync it with the cloud database when connectivity is restored."

"SQLite’s most valuable feature is the ability to store granular-level backups of databases."

"It was a bit easy to use compared to other tools. It's simple. I found it pretty easy to execute my SQL queries."

"I haven't encountered any problems in my use cases. So, it has been a stable product for me."

Cons

"In my limited experience using SAP, the process of granting access to different modules is difficult. Specifically, the requirement to assign roles and key codes to users rather than being able to assign them individually made the process more complex. It would be beneficial if there was a way to assign key codes separately, rather than having to create multiple roles. This would make managing access easier."

"A documents preview could be helpful."

"The installation process could be more straightforward."

"The initial setup of SAP HANA is complex. We did the implementation of one site, and a global deployment will take another three to four years."

"SAP HANA is not perfect and they could improve by having more options and more integration."

"I would like to see improvements in the connectivity of the solution with other BI software. Not every software can connect to it natively."

"HANA could be improved by adding analytics and development models in the institution."

"The relationship with a partner that sells SAP could be better. We depend much more on our own development, and the partner is for selling us the solutions, so we need them to be able to supply help and answers. The partner isn't very helpful, and we have to rely on our own knowledge and research."

More SAP HANA cons

"A potential drawback is that the database file stored within the application's local storage could be accessible to users."

"There are some difficulties on the server side. When syncing data with databases like SQL Server or Oracle, SQLite requires a kind of double effort."

"It could have a user-friendly GUI and better intelligence features."

"Compared to other tools, the performance was less effective than that of Microsoft Access."

"The performance could be better."

"I primarily use SQLite for small-scale applications due to its limitations in storing large amounts of data. For larger-scale projects, I typically opt for MySQL or other alternatives. Storing a large number of dates in SQLite can significantly impact its performance."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"SAP HANA is very expensive here in China. My company bought the SAP ERP suite, which includes SAP HANA. For others who use SAP HANA as an analytical database, CPU numbers will affect the pricing, so as a solution, it's costly."

"I would rate the pricing of the solution a ten on ten. The pricing for on-prem SAP HANA is on a yearly basis and expensive. I am not aware of the actual pricing but it is based on 64 Gigabytes. For instance, if you consider $10,000 for 64 Gigabytes, then you can calculate the cost for Terabytes in case you have one. You will have to buy expensive hardware as well which is quite a lot."

"SAP HANA is very expensive for small to medium businesses."

"The price of this product is good."

"The cost of SAP HANA is high, and I would rate the price at eight out of ten."

"We pay $200 on a monthly basis."

"The pricing is a bit on the high side."

"SAP HANA is affordable. I rate it a seven out of ten."

More SAP HANA pricing and cost advice

"It's not expensive."

"I rate the product’s pricing a six out of ten."

"The tool is open-source."

"It's a good value."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Computer Software Company

Government

Computer Software Company

15%

Comms Service Provider

13%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	25
Midsize Enterprise	11
Large Enterprise	61

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	5
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	3

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 do you like most about SQLite?

It was a bit easy to use compared to other tools. It's simple. I found it pretty easy to execute my SQL queries.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SQLite?

It is not expensive.

What needs improvement with SQLite?

There were some complications. For example, you have to upload the dataset into SQLite, and once it's uploaded, you might find difficulties working with it.

Oracle Database vs SAP HANA

Comparisons

Compared 25% of the time

SQL Server vs SAP HANA

Compared 20% of the time

MySQL vs SAP HANA

Compared 10% of the time

IBM Db2 Database vs SAP HANA

Compared 8% of the time

SAP Adaptive Server Enterprise vs SAP HANA

Compared 3% of the time

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Compared 38% of the time

LanceDB vs SQLite

Compared 9% of the time

DuckDB vs SQLite

Compared 7% of the time

MySQL vs SQLite

Compared 7% of the time

ClickHouse vs SQLite

Compared 4% of the time

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Product Reports

Download SAP HANA product report

SAP HANA

August 2025

Download SQLite product report

August 2025

Also Known As

SAP High-Performance Analytic Appliance, HANA

No data available

Overview

SAP HANA, also known as SAP High-performance Analytics Appliance, is a multi-model database that stores data in its memory, allowing users to avoid disk storage. The product combines its robust database with services for creating applications. SAP HANA is faster than other database management systems (DBMS) because it stores data in column-based tables in main memory and brings online analytical processing (OLAP) and online transaction processing (OLTP) together.

The column-oriented in-memory database design allows users to run high-speed transactions alongside advanced analytics, all in a single system. This provides companies with the ability to process very large amounts of data with low latency and query data in an instant. By combining multiple data management capabilities, the solution simplifies IT, helps businesses with innovations, and facilitates digital transformation.

The solution is structured into five groups of capabilities, categorized as:

Database design
Database management
Application development
Advanced analytics
Data virtualization

There are three more SAP products that work alongside SAP HANA and complete the experience for users together. SAP S/4HANA Cloud is a ready-to-run cloud enterprise resource planning (ERP). SAP BW/4HANA is a packaged data warehouse, based on SAP HANA, which allows users to consolidate data across the enterprise to get a consistent view of their data. Finally, SAP Cloud is a single database as a service (DBaaS) foundation for modern applications and analytics across all enterprise data. All three products can combine with SAP HANA to deliver to users an optimized experience regarding their data.

SAP HANA Features

Each architectural group of capabilities of SAP HANA has various features that users can benefit from. These include:

Parallel processing database: SAP HANA utilizes a single platform to run transactional and analytical workloads.
ACID compliance: This feature ensures compliance with requirements for Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, and Durability (ACID) standards.
Multi-tenancy: This feature allows multiple tenant databases to run in one system while sharing the same memory and processors.
Multi-tier storage and persistent memory support: SAP HANA's native storage extension is a built-in capability to manage between memory and persistent storage, including SAP HANA Cloud Data Lake.
Scaling: The scaling feature supports terabytes of data in a single server and distributes large tables across multiple servers in a cluster to scale further.
Data modeling: This feature consists of graphical modeling tools that enable collaboration between stakeholders and the creation of models to execute complex business logic and data transformation in real time.
Stored procedures: The product has a native language to build stored procedures and uses advanced capabilities to create complex logic.
Administration: This feature consists of administration tools for various platform lifecycle, performance, and management operations and automations.
Security: SAP HANA provides its users with real-time data anonymization features to extract value from data while protecting privacy.
Availability and recovery: The tool supports high availability and disaster recovery through an array of techniques, including backup, storage mirroring, synchronous, asynchronous, and multitarget system replication.
Extended application services: Through its built-in application server, users can develop services such as REST and ODATA, as well as web applications that can run on multiple locations.
Client access: The product offers clients the ability to access it via other application platforms and languages, including Java, JavaScript, R, and Go.
Application lifecycle management: This set of features facilitates the building and packaging of applications, transporting them for development to test to production, and then deploying them.
Application development: This feature consists of a set of tools that offer application development on premises and in the Cloud. The programming language ABAP includes additional optimized features to build extensions to SAP applications.
Search: The search feature uses SQL to locate text promptly across multiple columns and textual content.
Spatial processing: This product feature provides native support for spatial data types and spatial functions.
Graph: Through this feature, users of the product can store and process highly connected data using a property graph.
Streaming analytics: This feature combines various data sources that users can utilize to discover trends over a set period.
Data integration and replication: The solution offers comprehensive features to handle all data integration scenarios.
Data federation: This feature allows users to perform queries on remote data sources in real time with data federation.
Caching: The capacity to cache data provides users with the ability to optimize federated queries against remote sources of data.

SAP HANA Benefits

SAP HANA provides many benefits for its users. These include:

This solution offers a high level of data and application security, beginning from a secure setup and providing continuous support.
SAP HANA offers augmentation for applications and analytics with built-in machine learning (ML).
The solution works in a timely manner, as it provides a response to queries within seconds in large production applications.
SAP HANA simplifies work, as it provides a single gateway to all user data with advanced data virtualization.
The product is very flexible, as it allows users to deploy applications in a public or private cloud, in multiple clouds, on premises, or hybrid.
SAP HANA scales easily for data volume and concurrent users across a distributed environment.
This is a powerful solution in terms of querying large datasets with a massively parallel processing (MPP) database.
SAP HANA is a versatile product that supports hybrid transactional and analytical processing as well as many data types.
The product provides a smaller data footprint with no data duplication or advanced compression, and reduces data silos.

Reviews from Real Users

According to a database consultant at a pharma/biotech company, SAP HANA is a very robust solution with good data access.

Bruno V., owner at LAVORO AUTOM INF E COM LTDA, likes SAP HANA because the product offers advanced features, helps reduce hours, and makes it easy to find what you need.

SAP

SQLite is an open-source, serverless, reliable, and flexible, SQL database engine. It is particularly favored in the realm of embedded database solutions and small to medium-sized projects. Unlike traditional database systems that operate on a client-server model, SQLite is a serverless database engine, meaning it runs directly within the application it powers. This unique architecture makes SQLite an ideal choice for applications where simplicity, efficiency, and minimal configuration are paramount.

SQLite is an embedded database engine, which means it operates directly within the application that uses it, without requiring a separate server process. It is designed to be cross-platform, supporting multiple operating systems, and is is compatible with a wide range of programming languages, such as C, C++, Python, Java, and more. This makes it highly portable and suitable for a wide range of applications, from mobile devices to desktop software and web applications.

The key advantages of SQLite is its reliability, the lightweight nature and efficient performance. It has a small footprint, typically requiring only a few megabytes of disk space, and can operate entirely in memory if needed. It is designed to be reliable and robust, with built-in features such as atomic commit and rollback, which ensure data integrity even in the event of system crashes or power failures. Finally, the SQLite solution requires no configuration or setup, making it easy to use and deploy. It can be embedded directly into applications without the need for complex installation or configuration procedures.

SQLite Functionality

SQL Compliance: SQLite supports a substantial portion of the SQL standard, including features like transactions, triggers, views, and indexes.
File-based Storage: SQLite stores its entire database as a single cross-platform file on the host machine's file system.
ACID Compliance: SQLite fully supports ACID (Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability) transactions, ensuring data consistency and integrity in concurrent access scenarios.

SQLite is an open-source project distributed under a public domain license, which means it can be used, modified, and distributed freely, without any licensing costs or restrictions.

To summarize, SQLite is widely used in various applications, including web browsers (e.g., Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome), mobile applications (e.g., Android, iOS), embedded systems, and desktop software. Its simplicity, portability, and efficiency make it a popular choice for developers who require a lightweight and reliable database solution, especially in resource-constrained environments or applications with modest data storage needs.

Sample Customers

Unilever, NHS 24, adidas Group, CHIO Aachen, Hamburg Port Authority (HPA), Bangkok Airways Public Company Limited

Oracle, Bloomberg, Bentley, Mozilla