The EDB Postgres Advanced Server is an advanced deployment of the PostgreSQL relational database with greater features and Oracle compatibility, from EnterpriseDB headquartered in Bedford, Massachusetts.
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SAP IQ
Score 9.0 out of 10
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SAP IQ (formerly SAP Sybase IQ) is a columnar relational database management system (RDBMS) optimized for Big Data analytics.
It's great if you are using or wish to use PostgreSQL and need the added performance optimization, security features and developer and DBA tools. If you need compatibility with Oracle it's a must-have. There are many developer features that greatly assist dev teams in integrating and implementing complex middleware. It's great for optimizing complex database queries as well as for scaling. I would recommend Postgres Plus Advanced Server for any software development team that is hitting the limit of what PostgreSQL is capable of and wants to improve performance, security, and gain extra developer tools.
Does data compression very well, produces query results very quickly, ability to scale up as data volume/size grow in an organization, row level versioning is in memory and hence the speed. It is a very stable product for large enterprises. More detailed documentation on how to use this product in the initial stages would be really welcome.
PPAS Oracle compatibility, especially the PL/SQL syntax, has made migrating database-tier code very simple. Most Oracle packages do not need to be changed at all and those that do are generally for simple reasons like a reserved word in PPAS that is allowed in Oracle.
PPAS xDB, the multi-master replication tool, is simple and - most important - does not break with network or other interruptions. We have been able to configure and forget, which our customers could never do with other multi-master tools.
Most people had no idea that PPAS and PostgreSQL have full CRUD support for JSON. They think you need a specialized product and/or that JSON is read-only. Every organization that I have worked with is evaluating adding JSON to their relational model.
Documentation is excellent but spread out across many resources and can take a while to wade through—would benefit from having more intro level, getting started guides for various languages.
Ruby support is excellent but more Ruby examples and beginner-level documentation would be nice.
It is sometimes hard to find a community of users on StackOverflow so a larger community, and a dedicated forum with active members to answer questions and work through issues would be nice.
SAP IQ support is top-notch. I prefer starting all my SAP IQ support tickets with their Instant Messenger, where the majority of our issues are resolved. If it makes it to their ticketing system, they are very prompt at responding and very knowledgeable in the platform.
PPAS proved better for our customer's data-centric apps than Oracle in all but a few edge cases (encryption at rest and multi-TB database-tier backups) because it is simpler to install/maintain, runs nearly all Oracle-syntax SQL as well as ANSI SQL. PPAS has much more JSON capabilities (full CRUD vs. read-only in Oracle), simpler geospatial, simpler / more stable replication and datatypes that match developer expectations, such as BOOLEAN and ENUMs.
SAP IQ is perhaps an under-marketed product in the sense that it is able to scale up very well and perform much faster and more efficiently than other products such as Oracle - when we ran multiple large queries on both Sybase IQ and Oracle, we found that that results were much faster in Sybase IQ and this gave the confidence to go for this product.
Postgres Plus Advanced Server is quite complex and may take longer to implement certain things than simply using PostgreSQL depending on developer familiarity with the platform.
Getting up to speed can be daunting so again, there is an upfront cost in time spent learning the platform, besides the potential for extra time spent on a feature-by-feature basis.
The cost of Postgres Plus Advanced Server should be weighed against simply using PostgreSQL to decide which is the best solution for your business needs.
