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SAP HANA vs Spark SQL comparison

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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

SAP HANA
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
93
Ranking in other categories
Data Virtualization (2nd), Embedded Database (1st), Relational Databases Tools (3rd), Database Management Systems (DBMS) (4th)
Spark SQL
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
Hadoop (5th)
 

Featured Reviews

Bassem Mohammed - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Application Manager at TBTD
Integrated business processes have improved real-time analytics and financial performance
Whether I or my customers utilize SAP HANA's real-time analytics depends on the data needed to be displayed, and then choosing how to transfer the data to the analytic object, data source, or database to be displayed in the reports. It may be near real-time, real-time, or running batch every day. There are tools for integration between third-party systems, such as OData or APIs from SAP to get in or push data to other systems. Support for both structured and unstructured data helps organizations unify data sources depending on the needed data to be displayed. There are many ways to store it for report displays, but structured data will be better than unstructured data.
Kemal Duman - PeerSpot reviewer
Team Lead, Data Engineering at Nesine.com
Data pipelines have run faster and support flexible batch and streaming transformations
We do not have any performance problems, but we do have some resource problems. Spark SQL consumes so many resources that we migrated our streaming job from Spark to Apache Flink. Resource management in Spark SQL should be better. It consumes more resources, which is normal. The main reason we switched from Spark is memory and CPU consumption. The major reason is the resource problem because the number of streaming jobs has been increasing in our company. That is why we considered resource management as a priority. Because of the resource consumption, I would say the development of Spark SQL is better. For development purposes, it is a top product and not difficult to work with, but resources are the major problem. We changed to Flink regardless of development time. Development time is less in Spark compared with Flink.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It's very convenient and very innovative."
"The benefits include high database loading performance, superior reporting performance, and ease of use."
"If you want to scale with new processes and new reports, that's fairly easy."
"We plan to continue using this solution for our clients."
"Anyone currently using SAP will be transitioning to HANA."
"We are using the solution for the DW system. The primary function of the solution is for the database in memory."
"SAP HANA has everything, and that is the advantage of SAP because you can get everything in one suite, whatever you need for your company."
"It is difficult for me to narrow down what the best features are in SAP HANA because they work together to provide the overall functionality of the solution. However, the Fiori application is very good."
"I find the Thrift connection valuable."
"The speed of getting data."
"We use it to gather all the transaction data."
"Certain data sets that are very large are very difficult to process with Pandas and Python libraries. Spark SQL has helped us a lot with that."
"The scalability of the solution is good."
"It is a stable solution."
"Data validation and ease of use are the most valuable features."
"The solution is easy to understand if you have basic knowledge of SQL commands."
 

Cons

"I would like to see improvement on the feedback from the road-map; it is currently extremely hard to get insight in this area."
"While SAP HANA is good, it would be better if it comes at a more affordable price."
"In my limited experience using SAP, the process of granting access to different modules is difficult. Specifically, the requirement to assign roles and key codes to users rather than being able to assign them individually made the process more complex. It would be beneficial if there was a way to assign key codes separately, rather than having to create multiple roles. This would make managing access easier."
"The initial setup of SAP HANA is quite difficult as it has a steep learning curve."
"I'd just like to see some more improvements done on the training, both on the functional training and technical training sides as a part of the complete solution."
"In practice, SAP HANA is very powerful, but I see areas where it could be improved to make life easier for users and teams, such as having too many Fiori apps with overlapping functionality, navigation not being intuitive for finance users, and users still needing to switch between Fiori and SAP GUI."
"The solution needs to work on its performance and make it faster."
"The SAP ERP processes are quite complex and it can be challenging."
"The initial setup is a bit complex."
"In the next update, we'd like to see better performance for small points of data. It is possible but there are better tools that are faster and cheaper."
"I've experienced some incompatibilities when using the Delta Lake format."
"Anything to improve the GUI would be helpful."
"Being a new user, I am not able to find out how to partition it correctly. I probably need more information or knowledge. In other database solutions, you can easily optimize all partitions. I haven't found a quicker way to do that in Spark SQL. It would be good if you don't need a partition here, and the system automatically partitions in the best way. They can also provide more educational resources for new users."
"SparkUI could have more advanced versions of the performance and the queries and all."
"It takes a bit of time to get used to using this solution versus Pandas as it has a steep learning curve."
"Spark SQL consumes so many resources that we migrated our streaming job from Spark to Apache Flink."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Setup and licensing require planning and proper budgeting, as it is not cheap."
"It comes with a significant cost."
"Its licensing is expensive for SMEs and large enterprises alike."
"SAP HANA is affordable. I rate it a seven out of ten."
"While the cost of the license may seem high, it is important to note that the benefits of the solution far outweighs the cost."
"Set up a consortium of consulting partners and hardware vendors to define your tech. Landscape TCO (total cost of ownership) and then approach the OEM for pricing (on-premise or on cloud or a hybrid model). Check if you can bring your own licenses for some of the existing application licenses on the new platform, to reduce TCO."
"Price-wise, the product falls on the higher side of the spectrum. There is no need to pay for maintenance and support additionally. Support is available for bug fixes in the product."
"People who are technical will accept the cost, but financially they will assess whether this solution will bring them revenue or not. People often ask, how will I profit when the cost is so high?"
"The on-premise solution is quite expensive in terms of hardware, setting up the cluster, memory, hardware and resources. It depends on the use case, but in our case with a shared cluster which is quite large, it is quite expensive."
"The solution is open-sourced and free."
"There is no license or subscription for this solution."
"We use the open-source version, so we do not have direct support from Apache."
"We don't have to pay for licenses with this solution because we are working in a small market, and we rely on open-source because the budgets of projects are very small."
"The solution is bundled with Palantir Foundry at no extra charge."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Outsourcing Company
10%
University
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business26
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise64
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise4
 

Questions from the Community

What are the biggest benefits of using SAP HANA?
Based on my work with SAP HANA, the biggest benefit that it can bring to your business is total data management. This product is by SAP - a company that serves almost all needs a client may have co...
Is SAP HANA’s customer and technical support reliable?
We have been using SAP HANA for a fairly short period of time and have only taken advantage of their customer support. So far, we have not had issues that required specialized help from technical s...
Is SAP HANA difficult to set up and start using?
SAP HANA is fairly easy to set up, however, I do not think a complete beginner can do it. You certainly need some preparation - either you need to have experience with similar solutions, or with ot...
What needs improvement with Spark SQL?
We do not have any performance problems, but we do have some resource problems. Spark SQL consumes so many resources that we migrated our streaming job from Spark to Apache Flink. Resource manageme...
What is your primary use case for Spark SQL?
Spark SQL has been in our stack for less than one year, though some of our colleagues are using it. It is a useful product for transformation jobs. We generally use Spark SQL for batch processing. ...
What advice do you have for others considering Spark SQL?
Regarding the Catalyst query optimizer, I think we are using it. We were using it in the past, but I am not certain if we use it now. We used it a long time ago. I rate my experience with Spark SQL...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

SAP High-Performance Analytic Appliance, HANA
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Unilever, NHS 24, adidas Group, CHIO Aachen, Hamburg Port Authority (HPA), Bangkok Airways Public Company Limited
UC Berkeley AMPLab, Amazon, Alibaba Taobao, Kenshoo, Hitachi Solutions
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