IBM SPSS Statistics vs. Microsoft SQL Server

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
IBM SPSS Statistics
Score 8.5 out of 10
N/A
SPSS Statistics is a software package used for statistical analysis. It is now officially named "IBM SPSS Statistics". Companion products in the same family are used for survey authoring and deployment (IBM SPSS Data Collection), data mining (IBM SPSS Modeler), text analytics, and collaboration and deployment (batch and automated scoring services).
$99
per month
Microsoft SQL Server
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft SQL Server is a relational database.
$1,418
Per License
Pricing
IBM SPSS StatisticsMicrosoft SQL Server
Editions & Modules
Subscription
$99.00
per month
Base
$3,610
one-time fee per user
Standard
$7,960
one-time fee per user
Professional
$15,900
one-time fee per user
Premium
$23,800
one-time fee per user
Subscription
$1,418.00
Per License
Enterprise
$13,748.00
Per License
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
IBM SPSS StatisticsMicrosoft SQL Server
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
IBM SPSS StatisticsMicrosoft SQL Server
Considered Both Products
IBM SPSS Statistics
Chose IBM SPSS Statistics
Capabilities like effective data predictive analysis production, Cloud data visualization and the ability to handle a large amount of different business data at once using IBM SPSS Statistics is nice and also the collaboration functionalities are the best. The platform helps …
Chose IBM SPSS Statistics
Graphics within SPSS provide you with a general framework for understanding your data, so that you will be better able to interpret the complex inferential procedures that follow.
Microsoft SQL Server

No answer on this topic

Top Pros
Top Cons
Best Alternatives
IBM SPSS StatisticsMicrosoft SQL Server
Small Businesses
IBM SPSS Modeler
IBM SPSS Modeler
Score 7.8 out of 10
SingleStore
SingleStore
Score 9.8 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Alteryx
Alteryx
Score 9.0 out of 10
SingleStore
SingleStore
Score 9.8 out of 10
Enterprises
IBM SPSS Modeler
IBM SPSS Modeler
Score 7.8 out of 10
SingleStore
SingleStore
Score 9.8 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
IBM SPSS StatisticsMicrosoft SQL Server
Likelihood to Recommend
8.5
(85 ratings)
9.6
(96 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.6
(22 ratings)
9.0
(6 ratings)
Usability
8.0
(14 ratings)
9.9
(10 ratings)
Availability
6.0
(1 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Performance
6.0
(1 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
6.4
(12 ratings)
7.9
(25 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.7
(7 ratings)
9.0
(5 ratings)
Configurability
5.0
(1 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Ease of integration
5.0
(1 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Product Scalability
5.0
(1 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
5.0
(1 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
5.0
(1 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
IBM SPSS StatisticsMicrosoft SQL Server
Likelihood to Recommend
IBM
SPSS is well-suited for the following: 1) User Behavior Analysis: SPSS handles large datasets to analyze user behavior data. 2) Customer Satisfaction / Foundational Surveys: SPSS facilitates analysis of quant data from satisfaction surveys, keeping us informed about customer needs and preferences. 3) A/B test analysis: SPSS statistical tools for A/B test analysis, which helps optimize user experience of our products. Scenarios where SPSS are less appropriate: 1) Qualitative Data Analysis: I do not use SPSS for open-ended survey responses/qual data. 2) Live/in-vivo data analysis: SPSS is not ideal for real-time data processing. 3) Complex Data Integration: SPSS isn’t the best fit for complex data integration tasks
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Microsoft
Microsoft SQL Server is a great RDBMS and meets all of our requirements. If you need a stable DB platform to support your line of a business application you'll be well served. Licensing costs are far cheaper, more portable and a lot more user friendly than Oracle. Product support and security patches from Microsoft are strong.
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Pros
IBM
  • SPSS has been around for quite a while and has amassed a large suite of functionality. One of its longest-running features is the ability to automate SPSS via scripting, AKA "syntax." There is a very large community of practice on the internet who can help newbies to quickly scale up their automation abilities with SPSS. And SPSS allows users to save syntax scripting directly from GUI wizards and configuration windows, which can be a real life-saver if one is not an experienced coder.
  • Many statistics package users are doing scientific research with an eye to publish reproducible results. SPSS allows you to save datasets and syntax scripting in a common format, facilitating attempts by peer reviewers and other researchers to quickly and easily attempt to reproduce your results. It's very portable!
  • SPSS has both legacy and modern visualization suites baked into the base software, giving users an easily mountable learning curve when it comes to outputting charts and graphs. It's very easy to start with a canned look and feel of an exported chart, and then you can tweak a saved copy to change just about everything, from colors, legends, and axis scaling, to orientation, labels, and grid lines. And when you've got a chart or graph set up the way you like, you can export it as an image file, or create a template syntax to apply to new visualizations going forward.
  • SPSS makes it easy for even beginner-level users to create statistical coding fields to support multidimensional analysis, ensuring that you never need to destructively modify your dataset.
  • In closing, SPSS's long and successful tenure ensures that just about any question a new user may have about it can be answered with a modicum of Google-fu. There are even several fully-fledged tutorial websites out there for newbie perusal.
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Microsoft
  • Easy to configure and use with Visual Studio and Dot Net
  • Easy integration with MSBI to perform data analysis
  • Data Security
  • Easy to understand and use
  • Very easy to export database and tables in the form of SQL query or a script
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Cons
IBM
  • It would be beneficial to have AMOS as part of the SPSS package instead of purchasing it separately.
  • It would be beneficial to have other statistical tests, such as PROCESS, be part of the standard SPSS tests instead of having the need to run a syntax to have it installed.
  • My dataset tends to be smaller, and I have never had any issues with using SPSS. I heard that SPSS may not be optimal when handling large datasets.
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Microsoft
  • The import/export process can be tricky to follow with lots of steps and could be better for importing flat files
  • Obtaining help from Microsoft is cumbersome and often other internet sources are better and quicker
  • The documentation is not great and again it's generally better to obtain help elsewhere if needed
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Likelihood to Renew
IBM
Both
money and time are essential for success in terms of return on investment for any kind of research based project work. Using a Likert-scale questionnaire is very easy for data entry and analysis
using IBM SPSS. With the help of IBM SPSS, I found very fast and reliable data
entry and data analysis for my research. Output from SPSS is very easy to
interpret for data analysis and findings
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Microsoft
We understand that the Microsoft SQL Server will continue to advance, offering the same robust and reliable platform while adding new features that enable us, as a software center, to create a superior product. That provides excellent performance while reducing the hardware requirements and the total cost of ownership of our solution.
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Usability
IBM
Probably because I have been using it for so long that I have used all of the modules, or at least almost all of the modules, and the way SPSS works is second nature to me, like fish to swimming.
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Microsoft
SQL Server mostly 'just works' or generates error messages to help you sort out the trouble. You can usually count on the product to get the job done and keep an eye on your potential mistakes. Interaction with other Microsoft products makes operating as a Windows user pretty straight forward. Digging through the multitude of dialogs and wizards can be a pain, but the answer is usually there somewhere.
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Reliability and Availability
IBM
SPSS can tend to crash when I am trying to do a lot of data. This can slow me down when I need to do a lot of data
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Microsoft
Its does not have outages.
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Performance
IBM
SPSS does the job, but it can be slow. I do have to plan a lot of time to get through a huge amount of data.
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Microsoft
SSAS data cubes may some time slow down your Excel reports.
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Support Rating
IBM
I have not contacted IBM SPSS for support myself. However, our IT staff has for trying to get SPSS Text Analytics Module to work. The issue was never resolved, but I'm not sure if it was on the IT's end or on SPSS's end
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Microsoft
We managed to handle most of our problems by looking into Microsoft's official documentation that has everything explained and almost every function has an example that illustrates in detail how a particular functionality works. Just like PowerShell has the ability to show you an example of how some cmdlet works, that is the case also here, and in my opinion, it is a very good practice and I like it.
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In-Person Training
IBM
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
It was good
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Online Training
IBM
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
very hands on and detailed training
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Implementation Rating
IBM
Have a plan for managing the yearly upgrade cycle. Most users work in the desktop version, so there needs to be a mechanism for either pushing out new versions of the software or a key manager to deal with updated licensing keys. If you have a lot of users this needs to be planned for in advance.
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Microsoft
Other than SQL taking quite a bit of time to actually install there are no problems with installation. Even on hardware that has good performance SQL can still take close to an hour to install a typical server with management and reporting services.
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Alternatives Considered
IBM
I have used R when I didn't have access to SPSS. It takes me longer because I'm terrible at syntax but it is powerful and it can be enjoyable to only have to wrestle with syntax and not a difficult UI.
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Microsoft
[Microsoft] SQL Server has a much better community and professional support and is overall just a more reliable system with Microsoft behind it. I've used MySQL in the past and SQL Server has just become more comfortable for me and is my go to RDBMS.
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Scalability
IBM
I am neutral because I have not had to look into scalability since I am using as a student.
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Microsoft
SQL server does handle growing demands of a mid sized company.
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Return on Investment
IBM
  • IBM SPSS has allowed me to quickly analyze data for research.
  • IBM SPSS has allowed me to complete analyses in order to submit research findings to conferences and complete manuscripts.
  • IBM SPSS has enabled me to meet research objectives set out in grant proposals.
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Microsoft
  • Increased accuracy - We went from multiple users having different versions of an Excel spreadsheet to a single source of truth for our reporting.
  • Increased Efficiency - We can now generate reports at any time from a single source rather than multiple users spending their time collating data and generating reports.
  • Improved Security - Enterprise level security on a dedicated server rather than financial files on multiple laptop hard drives.
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