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Actian Ingres vs SAP BW4HANA comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 18, 2024

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

Actian Ingres
Ranking in Data Warehouse
17th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.9
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Relational Databases Tools (26th)
SAP BW4HANA
Ranking in Data Warehouse
11th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
45
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of Actian Ingres is 2.5%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAP BW4HANA is 3.4%, down from 4.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Warehouse Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SAP BW4HANA3.4%
Actian Ingres2.5%
Other94.1%
Data Warehouse
 

Featured Reviews

GH
Sr Sales Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Reliable performance enhances operations with good technical support
We run the entire IRS system, the income system, and the tax system. We also manage the entire Absa banking system in Africa. There's a lot of database applications, similar to those used in banks and the IRS The most valuable features for us are reliability and performance. Our system is used…
Ritesh Durvasha - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior consultant at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
Has supported efficient data processing and streamlined reporting for large-scale sales operations
The capability to handle a large amount of data and perform ETL operations is most valuable. Additionally, sending data out of SAP BW4HANA through Open Hub, which is a free service, is another valuable feature. In contrast, many other products charge for sending data out of their systems, such as Data Sphere or BDC, which charge premium service fees. Regarding advanced analytic tools in SAP BW4HANA, users can directly connect to Analysis for Office without additional charges. It's convenient as users don't have to download data into Excel since it's already connected to the system. From an integration capabilities perspective, it's easy to connect to SAP systems, though integration with non-SAP systems presents more challenges.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable features for us are reliability and performance."
"The deployment of our solution across a number of servers using Ingres .NET has meant that we can protect the database server behind a highly secure firewall and deploy the front end solutions on a normal web server."
"Ingres is the only database solution that has maintained a level of consistency and integrity about the way users interact with it."
"The solution's most valuable feature is that it is a very powerful tool. The solution also has the best stability, robustness, and customizability features."
"SAP BW4HANA aids in managing data from ER to front-end analysis, contributes to ROI, and fosters business growth understanding. I like that the solution breaks down components to a very granular level, allowing for customization and implementation based on specific requirements. The solution is stable. The solution is scalable."
"BW4HANA is definitely much better than BW; it is also much better than HANA Native."
"It is a stable solution."
"Provides a great analytics engine with all the capabilities."
"It provides the functions in a way that even a less technical person can do the modeling."
"The most valuable feature is that it's robust."
"It is a stable solution...It is a scalable solution."
 

Cons

"The ability to reset the log file without stopping the DBMS would be helpful for us."
"The seamless integration is a bit of an issue."
"It takes too long to escalate problems from the first level of support."
"They have taken out a few BW functionalities when they redesigned this. The way of multi-dimensional thinking and star schema got a little bit lost. It may be because of the cost, but certain functionalities that were previously implemented from the BW side should come back again in the whole product. It is a young product. It is version 2.0. In time, I'm pretty sure they will come back again because otherwise, it limits the potential of the product, and I have to do a lot of modeling towards that direction. For me, the analytics focus is too much. It is not cube-oriented in that way, so its functionality is limited. It is not really technically limited in the back end; it is more limited in the front end. It has a data-mining mindset for SQL developers. The navigational attributes should be easy. It needs to be built in models. I see the data mark cube or understanding that the composite provider needs to be models in a cube coming back. The multi-dimensional star schema approach and the reporting need to be done as well as possible to leverage the star scheme below. This is definitely not understood by many consultants and even composite providers for star schema. They always think in terms of flat tables, which is limiting. You need to build the right dimensions, objects, and so on. If you can build this in BW4HANA, then you have this understanding that BW4HANA is not forcing you in this direction, but it should force you a bit better in this direction. Maybe a few elements which were in use in BW should come back again. It would help the community to determine the direction to build on the cube. You can have maybe 50 elements, and then you can expand it to what you need by leveraging navigation. So far, this functionality is a little bit limited in the tool, and it is not thought through, but I think it will come. They should also be adding more capabilities for the transformation between different objects. In BW, this is currently limited, especially towards composite providers. It is a bit complex basically in the building. You have to have a lot of knowledge as well as know how to do it better because it is a bit different from BW. There is not too much expertise currently in the consulting markets. Many are trying to build something, but it may be based on their knowledge of what they have from the BW and HANA side. You have to find the right mix from both of them at this time. We also have HANA Native. These are our two different sync sources basically, and we have approaches to connect nicely, but it is hard to manage your team because a lot of coaching is required."
"From an analytical perspective, I would rate it a two out of ten because it's not competent in the current scenario of the market."
"The product's initial setup phase is a bit complex."
"Real-time processing isn't BW/4HANA's strongest point."
"The tool is not cloud-compatible."
"Stability is something that needs to be improved."
"There's the complexity in migration from BW to BW/4HANA, especially with data migration."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"For the on-premises version of the product, the solution offers a perpetual-based licensing model to its users. In general, SAP offers a monthly subscription-based licensing model to its users."
"It's a little expensive compared to Microsoft Azure."
"We started as early birds from the SAP side. We got this entire suite for free. I cannot really talk about the price because we didn't have to pay anything."
"It is an expensive product."
"SAP BW/4HANA is expensive."
"The tool is affordable."
"The SAP HANA application still hasn't been leveraged to the fullest extent, but it's a five-year enterprise license."
"The cost of ownership is higher. It's resource-intensive, and naturally, that increases costs."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
12%
Construction Company
12%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Retailer
9%
Construction Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise30
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Actian Ingres?
The seamless integration is a bit of an issue. I would like to see more direct connectors and stuff like SQLAlchemy. It's there but isn't available as a standard, so it involves going to GitHub to ...
What is your primary use case for Actian Ingres?
We run the entire IRS system, the income system, and the tax system. We also manage the entire Absa banking system in Africa. There's a lot of database applications, similar to those used in banks ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Actian Ingres?
Initially, it's a lot less expensive than competitors. Price performance has always been a priority, ensuring we remain competitive in the market.
What needs improvement with SAP BW4HANA?
For improvement, I think AWS for HANA could be better, but it is an on-premise solution. SAP is asking us to move to one client approach and suggested moving to data warehouse cloud, which should h...
What is your primary use case for SAP BW4HANA?
My use cases involve the client I am working with, who already has a BW ON HANA system, and we are currently migrating and redeveloping things in SAP BW4HANA; they are decommissioning the BW On HAN...
 

Also Known As

Ingres, Ingres 2006
SAP BW/4HANA
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Groupe Adeo, IsCool Entertainment
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Actian Ingres vs. SAP BW4HANA and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
908,800 professionals have used our research since 2012.