SAP IQ vs SQL Server comparison

SAP and Microsoft are both solutions in the Relational Databases Tools category. SAP is ranked #26 with an average rating of 7.7, while Microsoft is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.3. SAP holds a 0.7% mindshare in SQL, compared to Microsoft’s 18.6% mindshare. Additionally, 84% of SAP users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 93% of Microsoft users who would recommend it.

SAP IQ

Read 21 SAP IQ reviews

364 Views
264 Comparison Views

84% willing to recommend

SQL Server

Read 268 SQL Server reviews

18,969 Views
14,206 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

SAP IQ

SQL Server

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 4, 2025

SQL Server and SAP IQ compete in the database management and business intelligence category. SQL Server appears to have the upper hand with its comprehensive feature set and strong Microsoft support, although SAP IQ's performance in data warehousing is highly regarded.

Features: SQL Server is known for its scalability, user-friendly syntax, and robust features such as In-Memory OLTP, AlwaysOn availability groups, and advanced data transformation tools, making it versatile for businesses of all sizes. SAP IQ offers optimized storage and high performance suitable for business intelligence and analytical queries. Its columnar storage technology provides impressive compression, making it an ideal choice for large-scale data warehousing.

Room for Improvement: SQL Server faces challenges with latency, high update costs, and limited remote access security. It requires improvements in stability and integration. SAP IQ's primary issues are its high cost and a need for better marketing and support, particularly in metadata consistency and multiplex functionality.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: SQL Server offers multiple deployment options, including on-premises, cloud, and hybrid environments. It benefits from comprehensive customer service backed by Microsoft's extensive resources. In contrast, SAP IQ primarily supports on-premises installations with limited cloud capabilities, and users note a lack of adequate product support.

Pricing and ROI: SQL Server, while competitively priced, can be considerable depending on the version, but users find decent ROI due to its feature richness. SAP IQ is perceived as costly but offers significant performance benefits with large database implementations, justifying the price for many users.

To learn more, read our detailed SAP IQ vs. SQL Server Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

SAP IQ vs. SQL Server

April 2025

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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

SAP IQ

Ranking in Relational Databases Tools

26th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Data Warehouse (13th)

SQL Server

Ranking in Relational Databases Tools

1st

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

268

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Relational Databases Tools category, the mindshare of SAP IQ is 0.7%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SQL Server is 18.6%, down from 23.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Relational Databases Tools

Featured Reviews

Tejas Raj

Manager at Capgemini

Columnar database, so pulling records is easy but there isn't enough documentation for installation

I've seen very few SAP IQ systems in recent years. So people are moving away from SAP IQ In the last three years, I've rarely encountered customers using it. Fewer systems with SAP IQ usage among our customers. Most of them have moved on to HANA. There are parallel products, and there are also viable alternatives from AWS, so many have migrated to those.

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Azizul Haque

AVP, IT Division at NCC BANK LIMITED

It has eliminated all kinds of inconsistencies, and it is reliable, secure, and fast

I don't know whether SQL Server can support large organizations where the database size is more than 100 GB. It might be because of SQL Server, or it might be because of the programming of the software vendor, but a lot of people think that it is a problem with SQL Server. It can't handle a large amount of data or large data size. In terms of its usage, about 90% of our applications are running on the SQL Server database. We have around 1,600 users for our software, and all the applications are connected to the SQL Server database.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Columnar storage allows high compression, high load rates and high query performance."

"The primary benefit of SAP IQ is its ability to limit the expansion of the costly SAP HANA database, which has limited storage capacity. This necessitates a form of data management that involves moving data from SAP HANA to SAP NLS, which is essentially archiving. This allows us to retain access to the data via a link whenever it is required."

"Unbeatable speed and compression with a colummn-structured relational database."

"It is very robust for ad hoc DW queries and its columnar compression is unique and valuable."

"Valuable features for us include the compression, speed, fast response time, and easy object maintenance."

"The column-based technologies (basically all the database for ITP) are used for SAP IQ. It is used as a column-based solution."

"IQ is a very high-performance and high-transaction database."

"The product is easy to learn."

More SAP IQ pros

"Its usability is very good. Its performance is satisfactory."

"The solution has the capability to scale."

"SQL Server is easy to manage."

"I love the developer version. Microsoft tells you about all the cool things they provided for everybody. You can develop and do anything with it. It's really good to learn. Oracle will not give you that much freedom, and Microsoft really kills it. You don't do anything with it but develop, learn, break, and push it to its limits. If there are problems, you show Microsoft or ask them, "what's going on here?" There is good community support for the developer edition, and that's what I really appreciate. You can teach people about it without limitations. You can have small databases created. You can keep it for a year and then work on it. It's a good thing for learners and developers."

"The most valuable feature of SQL Server is that it is easy to set up."

"Its security is good. The GUI of SQL Server is also very good."

"I have found SQL Server easy to use."

"The initial setup was straightforward."

More SQL Server pros

Cons

"Concurrency and functional error messaging."

"The only negative aspect of IQ is the cost, which can be challenging for companies in Peru."

"Multiplex is very problematic. There are consistency problems in the metadata, meaning it is possible to lose metadata consistency. You should make sure you have healthy backups."

"The solution works best when combined with other SAP solutions. If the environment has other systems other options might be better."

"The tool gets stuck sometimes."

"The primary negative aspect is the cost, which can be a challenge due to the economic conditions in Peru."

"The room for improvement would be the marketing of the product, because this product is much better than advertised."

"There is very little documentation available."

More SAP IQ cons

"The tool is expensive."

"There is room for improvement in terms of pricing for SQL Server."

"If SQL Server could perhaps run on Linux, that would be good. Most of us prefer Linux and I've used a lot of Linux. I understand that SQL Server is quite powerful, but I'm not sure if the functionality is there, but if it could be used in an open-source type of environment, it would be very good."

"I would like to have the ability to restore backups in the next release."

"The way to make cursors and manage raw data in rows can be improved. Currently, the way to construct or build these cursors is very hard, and you can waste memory. You need a highly skilled person to make it more efficient. It can also have support for Cubes, which is the organization of data in different dimensions by using MDX languages."

"Scalability is an area that needs improvement, and the deployment is difficult, which why I'm looking for an appliance to deploy it in a much more scalable way."

"The security features of the solution could be better."

"I would like to see better integration between their link server and other platforms, such as IBM."

More SQL Server cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Evaluate all options; check to see if you need expensive add-ons."

"It's not that costly. So, the pricing is cheap."

"Negotiate based on the features required."

"The only costs after standard licensing fees are for add-ons and upgrades."

"Negotiation is very important."

"The cost of implementation is about $3,000."

"For medium-sized customers who don't need some enterprise features, the tool would be available for 200 USD per month. For the enterprise segment, the tool's cost can go up to 6,000 USD."

"The price could be better. Aside from the basic features, if you need any additional features that can be extended, for example, if you want to connect with the heterogeneous databases, they are being managed as separate services and not included in the package. If you manage a database in Azure, it's not providing SFS and reporting services. However, on-premises, if you purchase the SQL Server license, it includes SFIS and SFRS services. If you take Postgre SQL and MySQL, they provide almost all the same features even though they are both open source databases."

"We're looking at alternative solutions because we think Microsoft's licensing costs have been expensive."

"There is no licensing cost for SQL Server."

"The price for the Standard Edition is approximately $3,000 USD per core. Once you include technical support, SQL Server is cheaper than PostgreSQL and MySQL."

"If you are looking for a small setup and do not want an open-source solution or invest too much money in your database then SQL Server is a very good choice."

"There is an annual license and it is priced reasonably."

"Synapse is a bit costly. If I compare it with different databases, I think it's a reasonable price"

More SQL Server pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

46%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Healthcare Company

Educational Organization

49%

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SAP IQ?

IQ implementation costs about three thousand dollars. It's less expensive compared to alternatives like Teradata Base in terms of transactional efficiency.

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What needs improvement with SAP IQ?

The primary negative aspect is the cost, which can be a challenge due to the economic conditions in Peru.

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What is your primary use case for SAP IQ?

I worked on implementing new databases, migration data in production, and developer environments with SAP IQ.

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Would you say the price of SQL Server is high compared to that of similar products?

SQL Server is fairly priced because it has various editions, depending on the number of users, servers, or core packs you are using. If you compare the product to others in this category, the price...

See all answers

Has using SQL Server helped your organization in any way?

SQL Server has helped my organization through partitioning to distribute the workload, as it splits them up into smaller pieces so the machines can easily deal with it. However, this comes with a h...

See all answers

Which authentication mode is best for SQL Server?

My company connects through SQL Server authentication. We have company Windows accounts, but we do not want to connect the two, out of security concerns and to keep things separated for our own pur...

See all answers

Comparisons

Snowflake vs SAP IQ

Compared 29% of the time

SAP HANA vs SAP IQ

Compared 14% of the time

Apache Hadoop vs SAP IQ

Compared 11% of the time

SAP BW4HANA vs SAP IQ

Compared 8% of the time

Vertica vs SAP IQ

Compared 7% of the time

More SAP IQ Competitors

MariaDB vs SQL Server

Compared 14% of the time

SAP HANA vs SQL Server

Compared 14% of the time

IBM Db2 Database vs SQL Server

Compared 11% of the time

LocalDB vs SQL Server

Compared 9% of the time

Oracle Database vs SQL Server

Compared 9% of the time

More SQL Server Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

SAP IQ

April 2025

Download SAP IQ product report

Buyer's Guide

SQL Server

March 2025

Download SQL Server product report

Also Known As

Sybase IQ

Microsoft SQL Server, MSSQL, MS SQL

Overview

SAP® IQ software delivers speed and power for extreme-scale enterprise data warehousing and analytics. Its column-oriented, grid-based massively parallel processing (MPP) architecture and patented data compression and indexing technologies enable companies to exploit the value of huge amounts of data at the speed of business.

SAP

SQL Server is a relational database management system (RDBMS) by Microsoft. The product's main purposes are to store data and retrieve it as requested by other software applications - on the same computer or on another computer across a shared network. The solution is built on top of Structured Query Language (SQL), which is a standardized programming language used for relational database management.

The product is tied to Transact-SQL (T-SQL), which is an implementation of SQL from Microsoft that adds several proprietary programming extensions to the standard language. SQL Server is built similarly to other RDBMS products, as its structure is a row-based table that connects related data elements in different tables to one another. One of its most important components is the SQL Server Database Engine, as it controls data processing, storage, and security. Beneath the Database Engine is the SQL Server Operating System, which is used for memory and I/O management, locking data to avoid unneeded upgrades, and job scheduling.

The solution has four editions with different sets of services and tools. They include:

SQL Server Developer
SQL Server Expression
SQL Server Standard
SQL Server Enterprise

The first two are available for free and are typically utilized by smaller companies, as they work with fewer functions and storage. The second two editions are generally used by bigger organizations and enterprises and offer more features.

The solution has several functions through which users can facilitate different data-related processes. These include:

Aggregate functions: These functions are used to calculate one or more values and return a single value.
Window functions: Window functions calculate an aggregate value based on a group of rows and return multiple rows for each involved group.
Date functions: These functions allow clients to handle data and time data efficiently.
String functions: Through the string functions, SQL Server processes an input string and returns a string or numeric value.
System functions: The system functions of the product return objects, values, and settings.

SQL Server Services

SQL Server has a wide range of add-on services that provide additional benefits beyond database management. These services include:

Machine learning: SQL Server machine learning services allow users to do machine learning and data analytics within the product.
Service broker: This feature is a part of the database engine and offers messaging and message queuing for applications on the platform.
Replication: This feature consists of transaction replication, merge replication, and snapshot replication.
Analysis: SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS) adds online analytical processing (OLAP) and data mining capabilities to SQL Server databases.
Reporting: This feature supports the development of custom reporting applications.
Notifications: This feature generates data-driven notifications which are sent to subscribers of Notification Services.
Integration: This SQL Server feature provides capabilities for data integration, data import, and data warehousing.
Full-text search: Through this feature, users can utilize specialized indexing and query for unstructured text stored in the solution.
Visual studio: This feature supports data programming with SQL Server.
Azure Data Studio: This is a cross-platform query editor that can be downloaded and used alongside SQL Server.

SQL Server Benefits

The solution has many benefits for users. These include the following:

The platform ensures a consistent experience across other platforms while being fast and agile.
Through the built-in intelligence features, users can understand their data better.
The solution has enterprise-level security, which ensures the smooth and safe performance of users' data.
SQL Server offers the ability to retrieve large amounts of data quickly and efficiently.
The product installation process is fairly easy, and it offers a user-friendly interface.
SQL Server offers improved data storage and retrieval functions through frequent upgrades.
The solution reduces the risk of database server attacks, since it is not an open-source database.

Reviews from Real Users

A president at a consultancy evaluates SQL Server as a veteran solution with critical log shipping feature.

Harkamal S., a user at a manufacturing company, rates SQL Server with a high mark because it is a stable, scalable, and easy-to-deploy solution that pretty much covers everything.

Microsoft

Sample Customers

ASR Group, Citrix, State of Indiana, PocketCard Co. Ltd.

Microsoft SQL Server is used by businesses in every industry, including Great Western Bank, Aviva, the Volvo Car Corporation, BMW, Samsung, Principality Building Society, Wellmark Blue Cross and Blue Shield, and the Catholic District School Board of Eastern Ontario.

Buyer's Guide

SAP IQ vs. SQL Server

April 2025

Free Report: SAP IQ vs. SQL Server

Find out what your peers are saying about SAP IQ vs. SQL Server and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.

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