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Databricks vs Oracle Essbase 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

Databricks
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
93
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Data Warehouse (9th), Data Science Platforms (1st), Data Management Platforms (DMP) (5th), Streaming Analytics (1st)
Oracle Essbase
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
4.6
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
Database Development and Management (11th)
 

Mindshare comparison

Databricks and Oracle Essbase aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Databricks is designed for Cloud Data Warehouse and holds a mindshare of 10.0%, up 7.2% compared to last year.
Oracle Essbase, on the other hand, focuses on Database Development and Management, holds 1.2% mindshare, up 1.2% since last year.
Cloud Data Warehouse Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Databricks10.0%
Snowflake15.9%
Teradata8.4%
Other65.7%
Cloud Data Warehouse
Database Development and Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Oracle Essbase1.2%
Redgate SQL Toolbelt Essentials4.5%
Spotlight4.0%
Other90.3%
Database Development and Management
 

Featured Reviews

Satyam Wagh - PeerSpot reviewer
Consultant at Nice Software Solutions
Unified data workflows have cut ticket processing times and are driving faster business insights
Databricks already provides monthly updates and continuously works on delivering new features while enhancing existing ones. However, the platform could become easier to use. While instruction-led workshops are available, offering more free instructional workshops would allow a wider audience to access and learn about Databricks. Additionally, providing use cases would help beginners gain more knowledge and hands-on experience. Regarding my experience, I was initially unfamiliar with the platform and had to conduct research and learn through various videos. I did find some instruction-led classes, but several of those required payment. The platform should provide more free resources to enable a broader audience to access and learn about Databricks. The platform itself is user-friendly and easy to use without complex issues, so I believe it does not need improvement in its core functionality. Rather, supporting aspects can be enhanced.
Bhavya N - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior System Engineer at Infosys
Ensuring efficient data analysis and reporting while identifying areas for calculation and export improvements
The features of Oracle Essbase are valuable, such as its multi-dimensional database used for dynamic calculations and reporting purposes. These features are valuable because they support multi-dimensional data views, allowing users to analyze relationships across various data categories and establish a comprehensive perspective on business operations. Moreover, dynamic calculations allow real-time data analysis, significantly improving the accuracy and depth of financial insights. I have utilized Essbase's data aggregation capabilities. The Oracle Essbase interface provides a good user experience, allowing users to easily navigate and analyze data with fast query performance, effective data visualization tools such as charts, graphs, and tables, and flexibility for customizable analysis and reporting, including the ability to create ad hoc reports. The benefits of the interface include improving productivity and enhancing decision-making.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I like that Databricks is a unified platform that lets you do streaming and batch processing in the same place. You can do analytics, too. They have added something called Databricks SQL Analytics, allowing users to connect to the data lake to perform analytics. Databricks also will enable you to share your data securely. It integrates with your reporting system as well."
"The capacity of use of the different types of coding is valuable. Databricks also has good performance because it is running in spark extra storage, meaning the performance and the capacity use different kinds of codes."
"Databricks is a unified solution that we can use for streaming. It is supporting open source languages, which are cloud-agnostic. When I do database coding if any other tool has a similar language pack to Excel or SQL, I can use the same knowledge, limiting the need to learn new things. It supports a lot of Python libraries where I can use some very easily."
"The most valuable features of the solution are the hardware and the resources it quickly provides without much hassle."
"Databricks is a scalable solution. It is the largest advantage of the solution."
"It can send out large data amounts."
"The setup was straightforward."
"The most valuable feature is the Spark cluster which is very fast for heavy loads, big data processing and Pi Spark."
"The solution can handle a large volume of data."
"It's a very powerful analytical engine with Essbase as the back end. We can analyze, transform, or utilize a big chunk of data for our calculations."
"With Oracle Essbase, everything is centralized in a comprehensive financial statement analysis, allowing for complete management of budget, actuals analysis, and forecast."
"Oracle's capability to define custom hierarchies and dimensions has helped my organization in performing nuanced data exploration and advanced modeling because we use Oracle Essbase for dimension definition and also to define the properties of these members, such as dynamic members, stored members, shared members."
"Unlike relational, where you're linking together multiple tables, with Essbase, you basically define what the dimensions are beforehand, and you define the hierarchy, and then load the data. This allows you to do a pretty sophisticated analysis so that you can drill into it and slice and dice the data."
"Essbase is a kind of backbone, or back end, for systems like Hyperion Planning."
"Oracle Essbase is a web integration system that integrates with other data systems."
"The Oracle Essbase interface provides a good user experience, allowing users to easily navigate and analyze data with fast query performance, effective data visualization tools such as charts, graphs, and tables, and flexibility for customizable analysis and reporting, including the ability to create ad hoc reports."
 

Cons

"Databricks is not geared towards the end-user, but rather it is for data engineers or data scientists."
"I have had some issues with some of the Spark clusters running on Databricks, where the Spark runtime and clusters go up and down, which is an area for improvement."
"I'm not the guy that I'm working with Databricks on a daily basis. I'm on the management team. However, my team tells me there are limitations with streaming events. The connectors work with a small set of platforms. For example, we can work with Kafka, but if we want to move to an event-driven solution from AWS, we cannot do it. We cannot connect to all the streaming analytics platforms, so we are limited in choosing the best one."
"The integration features could be more interesting, more involved."
"Databricks' performance when serving the data to an analytics tool isn't as good as Snowflake's."
"In the next release, I would like to see more optimization features."
"The initial setup of Databricks could be complex."
"There is room for improvement in the documentation of processes and how it works."
"The main concern is that Oracle is ending on-premises server support, so it would be better if there was a cloud platform available for Oracle Essbase."
"They should improve the solution's performance."
"The initial setup is pretty complex."
"The solution could enhance business analytics. I delved into the data using Oracle Essbase to create a new support tool."
"A significant area for improvement in Oracle Essbase is that financial statement analysis, CAPEX and OPEX analysis, and financial consolidation must be done manually, as Oracle Essbase doesn't include the financial consolidation module that is available in EPM."
"The initial setup could be simplified."
"It's an expensive product to use."
"There is room for improvement in terms of cost-effectiveness."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Databricks' cost could be improved."
"The solution is affordable."
"There are different versions."
"We implement this solution on behalf of our customers who have their own Azure subscription and they pay for Databricks themselves. The pricing is more expensive if you have large volumes of data."
"We find Databricks to be very expensive, although this improved when we found out how to shut it down at night."
"The product pricing is moderate."
"The price is okay. It's competitive."
"Databricks are not costly when compared with other solutions' prices."
"It is a costly solution."
"The solution is expensive."
"I believe the licensing is on a monthly base."
"Essbase is competitively priced."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
18%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Healthcare Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
20%
Insurance Company
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
Retailer
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business26
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise56
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise14
 

Questions from the Community

Which do you prefer - Databricks or Azure Machine Learning Studio?
Databricks gives you the option of working with several different languages, such as SQL, R, Scala, Apache Spark, or Python. It offers many different cluster choices and excellent integration with ...
How would you compare Databricks vs Amazon SageMaker?
We researched AWS SageMaker, but in the end, we chose Databricks. Databricks is a Unified Analytics Platform designed to accelerate innovation projects. It is based on Spark so it is very fast. It...
Which would you choose - Databricks or Azure Stream Analytics?
Databricks is an easy-to-set-up and versatile tool for data management, analysis, and business analytics. For analytics teams that have to interpret data to further the business goals of their orga...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Oracle Essbase?
It's not that expensive, but also not cheap. I'm not sure because it's a private license.
What needs improvement with Oracle Essbase?
A significant area for improvement in Oracle Essbase is that financial statement analysis, CAPEX and OPEX analysis, and financial consolidation must be done manually, as Oracle Essbase doesn't incl...
What is your primary use case for Oracle Essbase?
The initial setup of Oracle Essbase is dependent on whether you select BSO or ASO cubes. First, you need to set up the type of information and once the type of cubes is defined, you need to define ...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Databricks Unified Analytics, Databricks Unified Analytics Platform, Redash
Essbase
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Elsevier, MyFitnessPal, Sharethrough, Automatic Labs, Celtra, Radius Intelligence, Yesware
CHU de Rennes, Bellco Credit Union, Akindo Sushiro Co. Ltd, Deutsche Telekom AG, Samarco MineraÊo S.A., PCCW Ltd., QDQ media S.A.U., Boiron Italia, Specialized Bicycle Components Inc., Akindo Sushiro Co. Ltd., Air Canada, Daelim Industrial Co. Ltd.
Find out what your peers are saying about Snowflake Computing, Microsoft, Teradata and others in Cloud Data Warehouse. Updated: January 2026.
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