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Actian Ingres vs SAP IQ 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 Relational Databases Tools
26th
Ranking in Data Warehouse
16th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.9
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SAP IQ
Ranking in Relational Databases Tools
24th
Ranking in Data Warehouse
14th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Relational Databases Tools category, the mindshare of Actian Ingres is 1.3%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAP IQ is 2.1%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Relational Databases Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SAP IQ2.1%
Actian Ingres1.3%
Other96.6%
Relational Databases Tools
 

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…
KK
Tech Director at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Works well with existing platform integration but could improve error messaging and technical support
I do not use SAP IQ's machine learning capabilities. I cannot assess the benefit of SAP IQ's distributed query processing for complex queries, as I am a non-technical operator. I am not sure if we use SAP IQ's data compression features. I think the compression we are doing is on the data storage level and not on the database level. I believe we do not use it, but I'm not certain. We do not utilize SAP IQ's support for unstructured data, as we do not have unstructured data. I do not have any strong opinions on SAP IQ's security features such as data encryption. It's not been something that has been much in focus, neither in our choice of the platform, nor in our daily operations. I guess they're satisfactory as they have not been a problem. I am not aware of the pricing and licensing of SAP IQ, as it's part of a bigger agreement, and I'm not the owner of that agreement. My impression is that SAP IQ is a rather expensive tool in terms of value for money. On a scale of 1-10, I rate SAP IQ a 7.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Ingres is the only database solution that has maintained a level of consistency and integrity about the way users interact with it."
"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."
"The most valuable features for us are reliability and performance."
"The feature I appreciate the most about SAP IQ is the compression, which is very good; we cannot compare with any other type of EDW."
"The column-based technologies (basically all the database for ITP) are used for SAP IQ. It is used as a column-based solution."
"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."
"Sybase IQ is a column based database, used for business intelligence, data warehousing, and data marts."
"It has the best performance in data retrieval compared to other database engines and reduces HW cost, achieving up to 70% less storage; Database is smaller than input data, even with all the indexes."
"IQ is a very high-performance and high-transaction database."
"But I do not think that other products really have an advantage for warehousing over the SAP IQ solution."
"It is very robust for ad hoc DW queries and its columnar compression is unique and valuable."
 

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."
"Aborts happen, and we don't know why."
"Concurrency and functional error messaging."
"The room for improvement would be the marketing of the product, because this product is much better than advertised."
"I think the universe should be part of the Sybase IQ tool set."
"The solution works best when combined with other SAP solutions. If the environment has other systems other options might be better."
"The primary negative aspect is the cost, which can be a challenge due to the economic conditions in Peru."
"In my interaction with SAP IQ's technical support, the people we are talking to don't know this application very thoroughly."
"A production database server should never crash in response to user input, but Sybase IQ has repeatedly done that for us, over multiple revisions of the product."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"Negotiation is very important."
"Evaluate all options; check to see if you need expensive add-ons."
"The cost of implementation is about $3,000."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
13%
Computer Software Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
28%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Healthcare Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise16
 

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 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.
What needs improvement with SAP IQ?
When it comes to SAP IQ, the areas that could be improved or enhanced include the error messaging and the locking capabilities, as that's where we often encounter problems. When there is an issue, ...
What is your primary use case for SAP IQ?
Our usual use cases for SAP IQ is that we have a Software-as-a-Service architecture where this database is the foundation for our SAP BusinessObjects platform. This is where it's getting its data f...
 

Also Known As

Ingres, Ingres 2006
Sybase IQ
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Groupe Adeo, IsCool Entertainment
ASR Group, Citrix, State of Indiana, PocketCard Co. Ltd.
Find out what your peers are saying about Actian Ingres vs. SAP IQ and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
900,747 professionals have used our research since 2012.