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Apache Spark vs Oracle Application Development Framework comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

Apache Spark
Ranking in Java Frameworks
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
69
Ranking in other categories
Hadoop (1st), Compute Service (6th)
Oracle Application Developm...
Ranking in Java Frameworks
9th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.0
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Java Frameworks category, the mindshare of Apache Spark is 11.2%, up from 7.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Oracle Application Development Framework is 6.5%, up from 3.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Java Frameworks Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Apache Spark11.2%
Oracle Application Development Framework6.5%
Other82.3%
Java Frameworks
 

Featured Reviews

Devindra Weerasooriya - PeerSpot reviewer
Data Architect at Devtech
Provides a consistent framework for building data integration and access solutions with reliable performance
The in-memory computation feature is certainly helpful for my processing tasks. It is helpful because while using structures that could be held in memory rather than stored during the period of computation, I go for the in-memory option, though there are limitations related to holding it in memory that need to be addressed, but I have a preference for in-memory computation. The solution is beneficial in that it provides a base-level long-held understanding of the framework that is not variant day by day, which is very helpful in my prototyping activity as an architect trying to assess Apache Spark, Great Expectations, and Vault-based solutions versus those proposed by clients like TIBCO or Informatica.
Asad Ur Rehman - PeerSpot reviewer
ERP Manager | Implementation Head at Tharsol
Eases the writing of code in Java with JavaBeans; easy to set up
My advice to anyone who intends to use ADF for the first time is that you must make sure that you have powerful enough hardware in order to run everything smoothly, especially when it comes to JDeveloper. If your hardware is adequate, you can get by without a problem in terms of speed, but be advised that it can use a lot of resources. However, even though ADF is a good product with great scalability that has really helped me out in hard times since 2014, I would ultimately recommend that new users look toward Oracle APEX instead of ADF. I would rate Oracle Application Development Framework a nine out of ten.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It allows the loading and investigation of very lard data sets, has MLlib for machine learning, Spark streaming, and both the new and old dataframe API."
"Aggregations are very fast in our project since we started to use Spark."
"Features include machine learning, real time streaming, and data processing."
"Apache Spark is a framework, which allows one organization to perform business and data analytics, at a very low cost, as compared to Ab-Initio or Informatica."
"As it uses in-memory data processing, Spark is very fast."
"With Spark, we parallelize our operations, efficiently accessing both historical and real-time data."
"The most significant advantage of Spark 3.0 is its support for DataFrame UDF Pandas UDF features."
"It is a very fast solution."
"It's database-centric, and it's seemingly easy to use the model–view–controller pattern that's built-in."
"The most valuable feature of the Oracle Application Development Framework is the rapid development and the security it provides."
"It's database-centric, and it's seemingly easy to use the model–view–controller pattern that's built-in."
"The most valuable feature of the Oracle Application Development Framework is the rapid development and the security it provides."
"The most valuable feature is the ease of integration with other Oracle products."
"The best part of Oracle ADF is being able to easily write code in Java with JavaBean files."
"This is a product that I recommend."
"There are several valuable features. First is the fast deployment. Also the ease of use."
 

Cons

"Stream processing needs to be developed more in Spark. I have used Flink previously. Flink is better than Spark at stream processing."
"The main concern is the overhead of Java when distributed processing is not necessary."
"The management tools could use improvement. Some of the debugging tools need some work as well."
"The logging for the observability platform could be better."
"There is complexity when it comes to understanding the whole ecosystem, especially for beginners."
"Apache Spark could potentially improve in terms of user-friendliness, particularly for individuals with a SQL background. While it's suitable for those with programming knowledge, making it more accessible to those without extensive programming skills could be beneficial."
"It is useful for scientific purposes, but for commercial use of big data, it gives some trouble."
"The migration of data between different versions could be improved."
"The performance of this solution needs to be improved because it is very slow."
"Another downside with ADF is that, right now, no one is using it because everyone has moved to Oracle's APEX technology."
"Oracle Application Development Framework has some minor drawbacks, especially in rendering with pages and bugs in business components. It's not a typical framework, it's a very heavy framework."
"I use JDeveloper along with ADF and, unfortunately, JDeveloper is a very slow tool. It takes a lot of time to accomplish things with it during both development and deployment. I hope that Oracle will improve JDeveloper to make it run faster."
"The model layer could be improved for performance because once that part gets bloated, the performance is lacking. So, there is room for performance optimization."
"The technical support should be improved; it's not as good as you get from other solutions and we don't get responses in a timely fashion, so we end up doing workarounds to solve issues."
"The application needs to be more lightweight and the performance improved."
"You need to have Oracle ADF on-premises to build a big project."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Apache Spark is an open-source tool."
"It is an open-source platform. We do not pay for its subscription."
"We are using the free version of the solution."
"On the cloud model can be expensive as it requires substantial resources for implementation, covering on-premises hardware, memory, and licensing."
"Apache Spark is not too cheap. You have to pay for hardware and Cloudera licenses. Of course, there is a solution with open source without Cloudera."
"Apache Spark is open-source. You have to pay only when you use any bundled product, such as Cloudera."
"Spark is an open-source solution, so there are no licensing costs."
"The tool is an open-source product. If you're using the open-source Apache Spark, no fees are involved at any time. Charges only come into play when using it with other services like Databricks."
"The cost of this solution is approximately $47,000 USD per site."
"We have yearly licensing costs."
"The solution has an annual licensing cost and there are only standard fees. If you want Oracle support this is charged extra on top of the licensing fees."
"We use a lot of Oracle products and in total, we pay about £5 million ($6.1 million USD) per year."
"Oracle ADF is an expensive product. I don't know the actual figures, but our licensing costs for the year 2020, for example, were very high."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
23%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Insurance Company
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business28
Midsize Enterprise16
Large Enterprise32
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise1
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Apache Spark?
Apache Spark is open-source, so it doesn't incur any charges.
What needs improvement with Apache Spark?
I find that there really lacks the technical depth to do any recommendations for future updates of Apache Spark. I used it for two years for our prototype work and testing things, but because I had...
What is your primary use case for Apache Spark?
I attempted to use Apache Spark in one of our customer projects, but after the initial test, our customer moved to another technology and another database system. I do not have any final remarks on...
Ask a question
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Also Known As

No data available
Oracle ADF
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

NASA JPL, UC Berkeley AMPLab, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo!, UC Santa Cruz, TripAdvisor, Taboola, Agile Lab, Art.com, Baidu, Alibaba Taobao, EURECOM, Hitachi Solutions
Financial Regulatory Authority (FRA) of Egypt, Red Samurai, ChB Jelly House
Find out what your peers are saying about Apache Spark vs. Oracle Application Development Framework and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,164 professionals have used our research since 2012.