Oracle Database vs SAP IQ comparison

Oracle and SAP are both solutions in the Relational Databases Tools category. Oracle is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.2, while SAP is ranked #24 with an average rating of 6.8. Oracle holds a 11.5% mindshare in SQL, compared to SAP’s 1.5% mindshare. Additionally, 92% of Oracle users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 80% of SAP users who would recommend it.

Oracle Database

Read 292 Oracle Database reviews

7,648 Views
7,113 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

SAP IQ

Read 23 SAP IQ reviews

1,362 Views
640 Comparison Views

80% willing to recommend

Oracle Database

SAP IQ

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 4, 2025

Oracle Database and SAP IQ compete in the database management systems category. Oracle Database seems to have the upper hand due to its comprehensive features and reliability, though SAP IQ is a cost-effective option for analytics.

Features: Oracle Database offers robust user support, high performance with advanced scalability, partitioning, and exceptional reliability and availability. SAP IQ is designed for analytical workloads with strong columnar storage and compression, high query performance, and suitability for data warehousing and BI tasks.

Room for Improvement: Oracle Database users highlight high costs, complex licensing, and technical operations. They also desire easier integration and improved stability with upgrades and support. SAP IQ needs enhanced training support, better documentation, and stability improvements, struggling with metadata consistency and backup support issues.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Oracle Database supports diverse deployment options with comprehensive support but faces criticism for slow response times and complex support channels. SAP IQ is criticized for expensive licensing and less frequent utilization, with potential for smoother support and easier global access, especially for training.

Pricing and ROI: Oracle Database is high-priced, suiting medium to large enterprises, with ROI potentially strong over time despite high upfront and hidden costs. SAP IQ is considered more cost-effective, offering a lower price point and quicker setup, attractive for organizations focused on analytics without significant initial investment.

To learn more, read our detailed Oracle Database vs. SAP IQ Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Oracle Database vs. SAP IQ

December 2025

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Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score

5.8

Oracle Database offers high stability and growth potential, justifying its cost with effective long-term ROI for businesses.

Sentiment score

6.2

SAP IQ boasts high ROI with substantial hardware savings, low maintenance costs, though some users lack authorization to confirm it.

No quotes available

For more quotes and insights, download the Oracle Database report

No quotes available

For more quotes and insights, download the SAP IQ report

Customer Service

Sentiment score

6.1

Oracle Database's customer service is responsive but inconsistent, with high costs and delays, despite strong knowledge base resources.

Sentiment score

5.6

Customer service is 24/7 but varies in quality; technical support lacks experts, causing slow escalation and limited advanced assistance.

In some cases, they support me on a 24/7 basis, round the clock.

Muhammad Usman Muzaffar

Senior Vice President IT Operations at ZTBL

Oracle's technical support is not very effective.

Ismail Aboulezz

Chief Executive Officer at LeaseWeb

For more quotes and insights, download the Oracle Database report

It seems very difficult to get proper advanced assistance on advanced or complicated problems.

Reviewer302462

Tech Director at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees

The quality of support from SAP is very good; if it's a known problem, they will have a knowledge base, so we will get immediate assistance.

Akhilesh Narayanan

Tech Lead, Database Section. at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the SAP IQ report

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score

7.4

Feedback applauds Oracle Database's scalability and flexibility, though license costs and architecture challenges impact some scaling decisions.

Sentiment score

7.4

SAP IQ offers scalable solutions with Simplex and Multiplex architectures, accommodating vast data volumes across PCs or servers.

The database regularly releases new versions with better performance and security features.

Ismail Aboulezz

Chief Executive Officer at LeaseWeb

RAC is the feature where I can distribute the load among multiple nodes, and it has helped our enterprise applications.

Muhammad Usman Muzaffar

Senior Vice President IT Operations at ZTBL

For more quotes and insights, download the Oracle Database report

We can span the read and write load into multiple nodes, and that scalability is there.

Akhilesh Narayanan

Tech Lead, Database Section. at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

If we wanted to add more servers into this entire setup, that would be fairly easy, so it's rather good when it comes to scalability.

Reviewer302462

Tech Director at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the SAP IQ report

Stability Issues

Sentiment score

8.0

Oracle Database is renowned for its stability, reliability, and performance, earning widespread user trust and industry presence.

Sentiment score

6.0

SAP IQ is stable, effectively managing complex transactions despite occasional issues, making it a reliable choice for implementations.

Oracle Database is very robust, and I rate its stability nine out of ten.

Ismail Aboulezz

Chief Executive Officer at LeaseWeb

It is a stable product.

Muhammad Usman Muzaffar

Senior Vice President IT Operations at ZTBL

For more quotes and insights, download the Oracle Database report

It's usually something external, such as lack of disk space or problems arising from the integration to other systems.

Reviewer302462

Tech Director at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the SAP IQ report

Room For Improvement

Users seek improvements in Oracle Database's cost, usability, integration, performance, and upgrade processes while desiring simplified UI and documentation.

SAP IQ faces challenges with high costs, inadequate training, stability issues, and integration limitations, impacting performance and adoption.

It would be more feasible if Oracle allowed licensing on a socket-based model instead of cores.

Muhammad Usman Muzaffar

Senior Vice President IT Operations at ZTBL

One existing feature that distinguishes Oracle Database from others is its ability to log errors in the database itself.

Praful Kolekar

Business Analyst at Tata Consultancy

Oracle Database needs improvement in data analytics capabilities, AI involvement, machine learning, and deep learning.

Ismail Aboulezz

Chief Executive Officer at LeaseWeb

For more quotes and insights, download the Oracle Database report

If the CPU utilization is very high, there is no direct way we can find out which query is taking the most CPU.

Akhilesh Narayanan

Tech Lead, Database Section. at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

When there is an issue, the error messaging we get is not always sufficient to do a fast and solid fix.

Reviewer302462

Tech Director at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the SAP IQ report

Setup Cost

Oracle Database is costly; negotiations and choosing the right licensing model are crucial for managing expenses effectively.

SAP IQ is cost-effective with various licensing models, though price understanding and negotiation are essential for optimal implementation.

For medium businesses, Oracle and IBM DB2 pricing are quite similar.

Ismail Aboulezz

Chief Executive Officer at LeaseWeb

Oracle Database is costly.

Muhammad Usman Muzaffar

Senior Vice President IT Operations at ZTBL

For more quotes and insights, download the Oracle Database report

No quotes available

For more quotes and insights, download the SAP IQ report

Valuable Features

Oracle Database excels in high availability, security, performance, scalability, and cloud integration, offering reliability for large datasets and users.

SAP IQ features column-based architecture, high compression, rapid queries, large-scale data handling, and integration with SAP BusinessObjects.

Its data management capabilities include data quality, data integration, data architecture, modeling, and data security, which are very important for data-driven companies.

Ismail Aboulezz

Chief Executive Officer at LeaseWeb

It is scalable and secure.

Muhammad Usman Muzaffar

Senior Vice President IT Operations at ZTBL

Regarding what I value about Oracle Database, as far as execution is concerned, I think it is one of the best databases I have come across.

Praful Kolekar

Business Analyst at Tata Consultancy

For more quotes and insights, download the Oracle Database report

We can get historical data quickly, and you can fetch information very quickly because every column is indexed.

Akhilesh Narayanan

Tech Lead, Database Section. at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

The most valuable feature of SAP IQ for us is that it works very effectively with the SAP BusinessObjects which we use it with.

Reviewer302462

Tech Director at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the SAP IQ report

Categories and Ranking

Oracle Database

Ranking in Relational Databases Tools

2nd

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

292

Ranking in other categories

Database Management Systems (DBMS) (1st)

SAP IQ

Ranking in Relational Databases Tools

24th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Data Warehouse (15th)

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Relational Databases Tools category, the mindshare of Oracle Database is 11.5%, down from 12.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAP IQ is 1.5%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Relational Databases Tools Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Oracle Database	11.5%
SAP IQ	1.5%
Other	87.0%

Relational Databases Tools

Featured Reviews

Muhammad Usman Muzaffar

Senior Vice President IT Operations at ZTBL

Running secure internal banking applications has been reliable and supports fast deployments

I am still working with Oracle products. I am still using Enterprise Manager 14c. I am using Oracle Database, Oracle ExaCC, Oracle EBS, Oracle WebLogic, Oracle Enterprise Manager, and Oracle Linux. I can answer questions about my experience with WebLogic Suite. I use it in my company. I have not used WebLogic's diagnostic tools. I do not utilize its lifecycle management features. I do not have much experience with WebLogic Java EE support, as I just deploy the application and the other team utilizes this server. I am not directly involved in WebLogic. I have been using Oracle Linux myself. The deployment is local, on-premises. I have been working with Enterprise Manager as well. All the components of Oracle I am using are on-premises. I use Oracle 19c database, Oracle ExaCC, Exadata on Cloud at Customer. I have been using Oracle Linux, Enterprise Manager, and databases as well. I have been working with Oracle Database for about 20 years. My experience has been 100% positive with Oracle Database. I have utilized its Real Application Clusters along with Data Guard. I do not use Oracle's Advanced Analytics and machine learning features right now. I have given this review an overall rating of 9 out of 10.

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Akhilesh Narayanan

Tech Lead, Database Section. at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

Compression performance gets high marks but user-friendly interface needs improvement

The downside of SAP IQ, from what I understood from the management side, is that the front end for the DBA, for the admin, is not that user-friendly. If you compare it with SQL Server Management Studio, it is not that user-friendly GUI for the admin. But the engine is very strong and powerful. It is easy to deploy SAP IQ; the implementation and installation are easy. The downside I see is that it doesn't allow most integrated backups; many of the marketplace players such as NetBackup, those software integrated backups are not available. So, if you want to take a backup, you need to take it locally, and then only you can back it up to any storage or anything. Those features such as integrated backup, which would allow it to stripe into an appliance or something similar, are not present. One thing I notice as a downside is that if the CPU utilization is very high, there is no direct way we can find out which query is taking the most CPU. In any other RDBMS, there are DMVs available to find out which query is taking most of the CPU, but those features are not present in SAP IQ. If our CPU is hitting at 100%, it is not easy to identify which connection is taking the most CPU.

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

17%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

36%

Comms Service Provider

Outsourcing Company

Computer Software Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	87
Midsize Enterprise	64
Large Enterprise	180

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	6
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	16

Questions from the Community

How do you run Oracle Database at your organization and why?

My company has been using Oracle Exadata Database Service for some years now, and we are happy with it. I will allow myself to answer your questions about why and what benefits it provides us with ...

See all answers

Do you know of any disadvantages of Oracle Database?

Undoubtedly, Oracle Database is a top product in its category. But it does have its disadvantages, and for me and my organization, that has been the limitations of the product. When it comes to Ora...

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What is the best use for Oracle Database?

Oracle Database is flexible and can be used for many things. My company's main use case for this product is for storing data. We benefit from its high level of security as well as from the fact tha...

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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.

See all answers

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, ...

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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...

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Comparisons

SAP HANA vs Oracle Database

Compared 20% of the time

SQL Server vs Oracle Database

Compared 13% of the time

IBM Db2 Database vs Oracle Database

Compared 9% of the time

Tibero vs Oracle Database

Compared 8% of the time

Teradata vs Oracle Database

Compared 6% of the time

More Oracle Database Competitors

SQL Server vs SAP IQ

Compared 11% of the time

SAP HANA vs SAP IQ

Compared 9% of the time

Snowflake vs SAP IQ

Compared 9% of the time

OpenText Analytics Database (Vertica) vs SAP IQ

Compared 6% of the time

SAP BW4HANA vs SAP IQ

Compared 6% of the time

More SAP IQ Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Oracle Database

January 2026

Download Oracle Database product report

Buyer's Guide

SAP IQ

January 2026

Download SAP IQ product report

Also Known As

Oracle 12c, RDBMS

Sybase IQ

Overview

Oracle Database is a top-ranking multi-model database management system by Oracle Corporation. Through Oracle database services and products, clients receive cost-optimized and high-performing versions of Oracle Database, as well as in-memory, NoSQL, and MySQL databases. The solution is available by several service providers on premises, in the cloud, or as a hybrid installation. It can be run on vendor servers as well as on Oracle hardware, including Exadata on-premise, Oracle Cloud, or Cloud at Customer.

Users can select from various types of Oracle Database solutions, depending on what they aim to do with this product. Based on their specific needs, they can choose among options that include:

Autonomously managed Oracle databases: This type of database eliminates the complexity of operating and securing Oracle Database, while simultaneously ensuring high levels of performance, scalability, and availability for users.
Oracle Database on Exadata: Users who seek particularly fast platforms can select this type of running solution. Exadata is a computing platform that is optimized for running Oracle Databases and it serves as the fastest platform for Oracle Database.
Oracle Database on-premises deployment: The product allows for deployment on-premises for clients who have data residency and network latency concerns. This option also offers customers the benefit of updated Oracle Cloud technology, including Exadata and Autonomous Database.
Oracle Database in the cloud: Organizations can use a specific version of this tool in the cloud, benefiting from complete control over the versions they run and when these versions change.

Part of this product is a fully automated database service called Oracle Autonomous Database, which facilitates the development and deployment of application workloads for organizations. It is built on Oracle Database as well as on Oracle Exadata. This service supports various data types and simplifies application development and deployment from modeling and coding to extract, transform, load process (ETL), data analysis, and database optimization. The service achieves high results in:

Performance
Availability
Security for online transaction processing (OLTP)
Analytics
Batch
Internet of Things (IoT) workloads

Oracle Database Features

Oracle Database has various features which users can utilize in their work with the solution. Among these features are the following:

Backup and recovery: Oracle Database ensures the integrity of users' data in system failure situations. This feature utilizes a tool named Recovery Manager (RMAN), which allows administrators to perform cold, hot, and incremental database backups, as well as point-in-time recoveries.
Clustering: This feature enables high availability of systems in order to run without interruption of services on occasions when one or more servers in a cluster fail. Included is a tool called Oracle Real Application Clusters.
Data dictionary: Through this set of internal tables and views, Oracle Database can be administered more efficiently.
Logical data structure: Through its feature for logical data structure, Oracle Database stores data in a way that allows users to interact with the database without knowing where the physical storage of the data is located.
Memory catching: Through the memory caching architecture feature, users can scale up very large databases and still perform at a considerably high speed.
Partitioning: This feature allows users to divide large tables into different pieces and store the pieces across storage devices.

Oracle Database Benefits

Oracle Database offers its users various benefits. Some of these include:

The solution decreases costs for organizations and provides a high return on investment (ROI) through the multiple services and features it offers.
Oracle Database has high-security protection which includes encryption, key management, data masking, and activity monitoring, that secures organizations' data within the tool.
The tool offers users the ability to use a single database for all data types, simplifying the process for them.
Oracle Database can be deployed in multiple places, including data centers and public and private clouds, which allows great flexibility for users.
The product allows applications from different platforms to communicate with the database through its networking stack.
Oracle Database is ACID-compliant, which helps maintain data reliability and integrity.

Reviews from Real Users

Paul S., president at Advance Consulting Enterprise, likes Oracle Database because it gets the job done, doesn't fail, and suitable for massively scalable applications.

An Oracle DBA at a computer software company describes Oracle Database as reliable with good performance and very good stability.

Oracle

SAP® IQ software delivers speed and power for extreme-scale enterprise data warehousing and analytics. Its column-oriented, grid-based massively parallel processing (MPP) architecture and patented data compression and indexing technologies enable companies to exploit the value of huge amounts of data at the speed of business.

SAP

Sample Customers

Agncia Nacional de guas, Anbima, Aria Systems, Asiana Airlines, Astelit LLC, Australian Finance Group, Banco Occidental de Descuento, Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited, BT, Caja de Seguros S.A., Casas GEO S.A.B. de C.V., Comic Relief UK, Corsair Components Inc., CSAM Health AS, CSOB Group, Datacraft Solutions, DenizBank A.S., Department of Treasury and Finance WA, Office of State Revenue, Deutsche B_rse AG, Deutsche Lufthansa AG, Deutsche Messe AG, Digicel Haiti, DPR COSEA, Essar Group, Essatto Software Pty Ltd, Farmšcia e Drogaria Nissei Ltda., Fomento Econ‹mico Mexicano S.A.B. de C.V. (FEMSA), FundaÊo Petrobras de Seguridade Social, Future Group, GFKL Financial Services AG, Grupo Posadas S.A.B. de C.V., Grupo Sinosserra, Guerra S.A. Implementos Rodovišrios, Hanatour International Service, Hays plc, Henan Mobile Co. Ltd, Hochschule Hof, Hong Kong and China Technology (Wuhan) Co. Ltd (Towngas Technology), Industries Corpa_al C.A., Infrastructure Development Finance Company Limited, Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatstica, Instituto Mexicano de la Propiedad Industrial, Kcell, LinkShare Corporation, MercadoLibre Inc., MetLife Inc., Nextgen Distribution, €BB-IKT GmbH, Octagon Research Solutions, Pacific Lutheran University, Paragon Data GmbH, Ping ltd., PJSC Trustbank, Prodaub _ Processamento de Dados de Uberl_ndia, Purdue University, Redknee Inc., Robi Axiata Limited, Shanghai Infoservice Technology Co. Ltd, Shanghai Sihua Technologies Co. Ltd, Sistema de Aguas de la Ciudad de M_xico, Solihull Metropolitan Borough Council, Suddenlink Communications, Suprajit Engineering Limited, Tallink Grupp, Terminales Ro de la Plata S.A., Therap Services LLC, Think Passenger Inc., Trafigura, Transmed S.A.L Lebanon, ValeShop, VelQuest Corporation, Vodafone Group plc, West Virginia Network, WIND Hellas Telecommunications S.A

ASR Group, Citrix, State of Indiana, PocketCard Co. Ltd.

Buyer's Guide

Oracle Database vs. SAP IQ

December 2025

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