There are many areas for improvement. A major issue is with table statistics. Sometimes the statistics are not refreshed correctly, which causes issues for us. When we update a table, it should trigger a status update, but sometimes it does not. This requires manual intervention.
Learn what your peers think about Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: June 2025.
Team Leader at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
Real User
Top 20
2023-08-11T08:01:00Z
Aug 11, 2023
The product does not have all of the features that the native products have. If we want to do something advanced, we must use Data Factory and Databricks.
In my company, everything is shifted to Azure Cloud instead of SSIS. I am learning more about Azure. I use SSIS when there is a huge amount of data and we have to load the data in chunks, making our processes a little slower. The overall performance could be faster.
The solution is expensive and has room for improvement. I believe the cost is the biggest issue. In Brazil, money is not easy to come by, and paying for this stuff is difficult. Most of my clients are moving to the cloud and purchasing some of the infrastructure there, but it is expensive and they don't always get the economic benefits the cloud can offer. They are creating the infrastructure from the cloud and paying a lot of money for it, and other costs are becoming problematic. Power BI is just one example. The process is the biggest barrier here, and sometimes lack of professional knowledge is also an issue. It is hard to find companies that really know what they are doing. The project I am involved in now is creating a data lake in the cloud for a big client. They hired another company, not mine, to create the project, but when we started the meetings I discovered that the big company they hired doesn't really know what they are doing and is still searching for professionals.
BI/Data Warehouse Analyst at a healthcare company with 501-1,000 employees
Real User
2023-03-09T22:03:22Z
Mar 9, 2023
I like the product and its performance. I don't have any notes in terms of improvement. It could offer more development across the solution. We do find DB2 to be a bit more robust. It needs more flexibility and features.
I don't have any need for new features. We'd like to see it be a bit more compatible with other solutions. It could be faster. Right now, Oracle is a bit quicker in comparison. We'd like the solution to handle a larger amount of data faster.
Senior Software Engineer at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
2020-08-30T08:33:18Z
Aug 30, 2020
I'd like to connect something like ES that I can use on objects on our SQL Server. We'd like to be able to understand how to export data to something like Semantic Technologies or like Graph DB. Some sort of easy export functionality would be a useful addition to the product. The solution should offer better integration capabilities with other tools and languages. For different deployment, companies may use different scripts. Sometimes we use SQL server data tools, however, sometimes we don't and it's not fast enough. There could be a bit of improvement in that regard. We find the cost of the solution to be a little high.
System Administrator at a university with 501-1,000 employees
Real User
2020-08-27T10:31:46Z
Aug 27, 2020
I think that building better data protection and a business intelligence layer over the SQL would be great and improve the product. If they could make it more like what Oracle in that way it would be good. We have to take the time and resources to build our own business intelligence when other products already incorporate such solutions. If they could make it more user-friendly for business users it would be a more desirable product. Add a business intelligence layer that is user friendly and the user-base can grow. I think they should also add a machine learning engine. This is one of the most important features of newer technologies that they currently do not have.
EDRMS Practice Lead at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Real User
2020-05-04T05:12:00Z
May 4, 2020
The setup has room for improvement. Some customers want to go to non-Windows Servers. Have the entire SQL Server done there though is an obstacle for us, as the configuration of Microsoft BI with cubes is a bit complicated. I would like the integration to be offered in a simpler way. I would like improvement in the integration between Microsoft SQL cubes and Parallel Data Warehouse with other members of the Microsoft family, such as Microsoft Power BI and SharePoint. This tool needs a lot of memory for processing. As it does a lot of jobs, it may need this memory while other tools don't need that much. It would help if they enhanced the memory and hardware usage of the tool in order to support the performance of doing the queries I would like the tool to support different operating systems. I want a dashboard.
Senior Principal Consultant at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Consultant
2019-12-15T05:58:00Z
Dec 15, 2019
This solution would be improved with an option for in-memory data analysis. Scalability can be improved because there are other tools that perform better with very large datasets.
Team Lead at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
2019-12-12T07:48:00Z
Dec 12, 2019
The initial setup of this solution is complex and can be improved. Sometimes you need to re-run the reports because they don't work. The reporting for certain types of data needs to be improved.
Product Director at a insurance company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
2019-12-09T10:59:00Z
Dec 9, 2019
I would like to see better visualization features. A stateless update functionality for the forms may help. Without this, you have to perform updates manually using the drop-down menu. The user interface should be more user-friendly.
BI Developer at a healthcare company with 51-200 employees
Real User
2019-12-09T10:58:00Z
Dec 9, 2019
I think that the error messages need to be made more specific. Recently, I was working with a large amount of data, and I received a runtime error. I had to solve it by running the query several times, removing data each time. If the error messages were less ambiguous then it would have helped.
Microsoft Dynamics Specialist at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
Real User
2019-11-20T05:39:00Z
Nov 20, 2019
Something that needs to improve, is the integration layer itself connecting to other non-Microsoft layers. But I don't know if that can be improved, due to the complexity of the data that they're connecting to. But I think they can maybe look at a way to do incremental updates, as it is slightly different.
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 Parallel Data Warehouse is excellent but very expensive. Working on the pricing could make it a better solution.
When there are many users or many expensive queries, it can be very slow.
There are many areas for improvement. A major issue is with table statistics. Sometimes the statistics are not refreshed correctly, which causes issues for us. When we update a table, it should trigger a status update, but sometimes it does not. This requires manual intervention.
The product scalability needs improvement.
Sometimes, the product requires rolling back to its previous version during a software update. This particular area could be enhanced.
The product must provide more frequent updates.
SQL installation is pretty tricky. Its scalability and customer support also should be improved.
The product does not have all of the features that the native products have. If we want to do something advanced, we must use Data Factory and Databricks.
In my company, everything is shifted to Azure Cloud instead of SSIS. I am learning more about Azure. I use SSIS when there is a huge amount of data and we have to load the data in chunks, making our processes a little slower. The overall performance could be faster.
The feature updates on the on-premise solution come very slowly, and it would be great if they came faster.
The solution is expensive and has room for improvement. I believe the cost is the biggest issue. In Brazil, money is not easy to come by, and paying for this stuff is difficult. Most of my clients are moving to the cloud and purchasing some of the infrastructure there, but it is expensive and they don't always get the economic benefits the cloud can offer. They are creating the infrastructure from the cloud and paying a lot of money for it, and other costs are becoming problematic. Power BI is just one example. The process is the biggest barrier here, and sometimes lack of professional knowledge is also an issue. It is hard to find companies that really know what they are doing. The project I am involved in now is creating a data lake in the cloud for a big client. They hired another company, not mine, to create the project, but when we started the meetings I discovered that the big company they hired doesn't really know what they are doing and is still searching for professionals.
I like the product and its performance. I don't have any notes in terms of improvement. It could offer more development across the solution. We do find DB2 to be a bit more robust. It needs more flexibility and features.
I would like the ability to do more real-time type updates instead of batch-oriented updates.
I don't have any need for new features. We'd like to see it be a bit more compatible with other solutions. It could be faster. Right now, Oracle is a bit quicker in comparison. We'd like the solution to handle a larger amount of data faster.
The performance could be improved because the query is slow if we don't optimize it. And even if we optimize it, sometimes it still runs very slow.
I'd like to connect something like ES that I can use on objects on our SQL Server. We'd like to be able to understand how to export data to something like Semantic Technologies or like Graph DB. Some sort of easy export functionality would be a useful addition to the product. The solution should offer better integration capabilities with other tools and languages. For different deployment, companies may use different scripts. Sometimes we use SQL server data tools, however, sometimes we don't and it's not fast enough. There could be a bit of improvement in that regard. We find the cost of the solution to be a little high.
I think that building better data protection and a business intelligence layer over the SQL would be great and improve the product. If they could make it more like what Oracle in that way it would be good. We have to take the time and resources to build our own business intelligence when other products already incorporate such solutions. If they could make it more user-friendly for business users it would be a more desirable product. Add a business intelligence layer that is user friendly and the user-base can grow. I think they should also add a machine learning engine. This is one of the most important features of newer technologies that they currently do not have.
The setup has room for improvement. Some customers want to go to non-Windows Servers. Have the entire SQL Server done there though is an obstacle for us, as the configuration of Microsoft BI with cubes is a bit complicated. I would like the integration to be offered in a simpler way. I would like improvement in the integration between Microsoft SQL cubes and Parallel Data Warehouse with other members of the Microsoft family, such as Microsoft Power BI and SharePoint. This tool needs a lot of memory for processing. As it does a lot of jobs, it may need this memory while other tools don't need that much. It would help if they enhanced the memory and hardware usage of the tool in order to support the performance of doing the queries I would like the tool to support different operating systems. I want a dashboard.
If the database is large with a lot of columns then it is difficult to clean the data.
I don't have any recommendations for new features at this time.
This solution would be improved with an option for in-memory data analysis. Scalability can be improved because there are other tools that perform better with very large datasets.
The initial setup of this solution is complex and can be improved. Sometimes you need to re-run the reports because they don't work. The reporting for certain types of data needs to be improved.
I would like to see better visualization features. A stateless update functionality for the forms may help. Without this, you have to perform updates manually using the drop-down menu. The user interface should be more user-friendly.
I think that the error messages need to be made more specific. Recently, I was working with a large amount of data, and I received a runtime error. I had to solve it by running the query several times, removing data each time. If the error messages were less ambiguous then it would have helped.
More tools to help designers should be included.
Something that needs to improve, is the integration layer itself connecting to other non-Microsoft layers. But I don't know if that can be improved, due to the complexity of the data that they're connecting to. But I think they can maybe look at a way to do incremental updates, as it is slightly different.