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IBM Db2 Warehouse 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

IBM Db2 Warehouse
Ranking in Data Warehouse
11th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SAP BW4HANA
Ranking in Data Warehouse
8th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
44
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of IBM Db2 Warehouse is 3.2%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAP BW4HANA is 3.7%, down from 4.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Warehouse Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
SAP BW4HANA3.7%
IBM Db2 Warehouse3.2%
Other93.1%
Data Warehouse
 

Featured Reviews

Sherpard  Muzuva - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Technical Manager- IBM Enterprise Systems at SYSTEMS INTEGRATED LTD (SYMPHONY)
Advanced features enhance business intelligence, but complex management calls for improved user guidance
While my experience with IBM Db2 Warehouse is somewhat limited, when compared to other databases such as Oracle, there are areas for improvement. They need to enhance the database to make it more user-friendly and easier to master. They should implement a more comprehensive graphical user interface with additional features. For instance, when users encounter problems, the system should provide better guidelines and troubleshooting directions, except for hardware-related issues. They need to implement tools that would help users perform basic troubleshooting rather than solely relying on support. Other databases have features where users can investigate specific issues using error codes. From my experience, many minor issues could be resolved before escalating to support.
HP
SAP Analytics Lead at Miracle Software Systems, Inc
Support and pricing challenges overshadow user expertise
In SAP BW4HANA, I have worked in modeling, extraction, and reporting. I have experience with different tools including Power BI, BEx tools, Web Intelligence reports, and SSC. The best features include the ability to create data sources directly on tables, and perform mapping without creating info objects. It directly maps to target fields and source fields. There is no info cube concept, only ODS concept. We can create BEx queries in HANA itself, not as a separate tool. The modeling and reporting processes are easier to accomplish.

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 of IBM Db2 Warehouse include its availability, easy integration, ability to deal with a large size of data, excellent performance with no delays, powerful security mechanisms, and effective support."
"Provides good security and reliability."
"It can scale effectively as long as resources are available."
"I think it scales really well and as long as you take enough time to learn a little bit about it, it works really well."
"Some of the best features are stored procedures, parallelism, and different indexing strategies."
"The solution is stable."
"The analytics engine is not bad at forecasting predictions."
"The standout feature of IBM Db2 Warehouse, which is particularly valuable for large enterprises, is its ability to handle big data."
"The UI is completely new, beautiful, and user-friendly. There are some other helpful features like global filters and advanced tools. We can perform custom calculations easily From a technical perspective, the performance has been enhanced and optimized for a limited number of flows. The content settings are more advanced, and there are so many other features that I can't name them all."
"The solution's performance is really good. Also, it's easy to operate, easy to administer, and relatively simple to install."
"The most valuable feature is that we can transform a huge amount of data and apply business logic as per the requirements."
"I like the tool's robustness and security."
"The most valuable feature is the dashboard."
"Its direct approach is the most valuable. You get more real time and capabilities than BW."
"It is a very stable solution."
"It is a stable solution."
 

Cons

"IBM Db2 Warehouse needs to improve its interface."
"The primary challenges customers face with IBM Db2 Warehouse are related to its complexity in usage. It requires highly skilled professionals who understand Db2, and both training and support are challenging to obtain."
"The biggest problems we have is when the backup solution is failing or slow and we run out of log space, which has happened probably a couple of times in the last four years."
"It takes a long time to have a new version or release, similar to Oracle."
"Responding to support tickets takes a lot of time. It can range from two to four days, even for critical issues."
"The biggest challenge anyone could have with Db2 Warehouse is their references or online resources and documentation. They are very, very, very limited on the web."
"There were some initial challenges with IBM Db2 Warehouse about eight months ago when I worked in this environment. When I coordinated with IBM support, they mentioned that the memory was insufficient for our needs. Our business environment required significantly more memory than the previous cluster could provide. Consequently, we have worked closely with on-site IBM technical personnel to address this issue."
"In terms of improvement, IBM Db2 Warehouse should be more scalable."
"The licensing cost could be made better."
"There should be a direct pipeline from Azure to SAP."
"Support could be more reliable."
"The product needs to improve with more performance and fewer data layers."
"The interface could be more user-friendly, as we often need to do low-level coding to get things done."
"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."
"If I want to have good reporting, then I have to buy a separate license."
"There's the complexity in migration from BW to BW/4HANA, especially with data migration."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"In a traditional on-prem database, in a data warehouse, the solution is probably on the expensive side."
"As an investment, the solution is very expensive."
"The SAP HANA application still hasn't been leveraged to the fullest extent, but it's a five-year enterprise license."
"We have a broad licensing arrangement, which is expensive but worth it for sizeable businesses."
"The product is free if we have the ECC license."
"SAP BW/4HANA is expensive."
"It is an expensive product."
"Price wise, this solution is on the higher side."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
30%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
7%
Educational Organization
6%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Retailer
11%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise5
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise29
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Db2 Warehouse?
The pricing for medium and large environments is almost the same as Oracle. I rate the pricing as six out of ten.
What needs improvement with IBM Db2 Warehouse?
While my experience with IBM Db2 Warehouse is somewhat limited, when compared to other databases such as Oracle, there are areas for improvement. They need to enhance the database to make it more u...
What is your primary use case for IBM Db2 Warehouse?
The main advantages of IBM Db2 Warehouse become apparent when dealing with business intelligence applications. I worked with it when it was installed for one of our customers, a utilities company, ...
What do you like most about SAP BW4HANA?
One significant advantage of SAP BW/4HANA is the direct integration with the SAP HANA database, providing seamless access to real-time analytics. Additionally, it enables real-time data integrati...
What needs improvement with SAP BW4HANA?
The integration with AI/ML in SAP BW4HANA is currently very limited, which is definitely an area that needs improvement. The second area for improvement is integration with third-party systems, whi...
 

Also Known As

InfoSphere Warehouse, IBM InfoSphere Warehouse
SAP BW/4HANA
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Alameda County Social Services Agency, Sui Southern Gas Company Limited
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Db2 Warehouse vs. SAP BW4HANA and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.