PostgreSQL vs. SAP BW/4HANA

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
PostgreSQL
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
PostgreSQL (alternately Postgres) is a free and open source object-relational database system boasting over 30 years of active development, reliability, feature robustness, and performance. It supports SQL and is designed to support various workloads flexibly.N/A
SAP BW/4HANA
Score 8.4 out of 10
N/A
SAP BW/4HANA is a next-generation data warehouse solution. It is specifically designed to use the advanced in-memory capabilities of the SAP HANA platform. For example, SAP BW/HANA can integrate many different data sources to provide a single, logical view of all the data. This could include data contained in SAP and non-SAP applications running on-premise or in the cloud, and data lakes, such as those contained in the Apache Hadoop open-source software framework. With SAP BW/4HANA,…N/A
Pricing
PostgreSQLSAP BW/4HANA
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
PostgreSQLSAP BW/4HANA
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
PostgreSQLSAP BW/4HANA
Features
PostgreSQLSAP BW/4HANA
Access Control and Security
Comparison of Access Control and Security features of Product A and Product B
PostgreSQL
-
Ratings
SAP BW/4HANA
9.2
4 Ratings
3% above category average
Multi-User Support (named login)00 Ratings9.74 Ratings
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)00 Ratings9.74 Ratings
Single Sign-On (SSO)00 Ratings9.74 Ratings
Location-Based Data Governance00 Ratings8.04 Ratings
Data Modeling
Comparison of Data Modeling features of Product A and Product B
PostgreSQL
-
Ratings
SAP BW/4HANA
9.6
4 Ratings
4% above category average
Data model creation00 Ratings9.64 Ratings
Data Exploration
Comparison of Data Exploration features of Product A and Product B
PostgreSQL
-
Ratings
SAP BW/4HANA
8.9
3 Ratings
18% above category average
Visualization00 Ratings8.93 Ratings
Data Warehouse
Comparison of Data Warehouse features of Product A and Product B
PostgreSQL
-
Ratings
SAP BW/4HANA
8.5
4 Ratings
1% above category average
High-Volume Data Processing00 Ratings9.64 Ratings
Data Warehouse Management00 Ratings10.04 Ratings
Administrative Automation00 Ratings7.53 Ratings
Self-Optimization00 Ratings6.93 Ratings
User Ratings
PostgreSQLSAP BW/4HANA
Likelihood to Recommend
8.3
(56 ratings)
9.6
(12 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.3
(9 ratings)
9.7
(5 ratings)
Availability
9.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
7.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
9.3
(7 ratings)
9.7
(7 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
8.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
PostgreSQLSAP BW/4HANA
Likelihood to Recommend
PostgreSQL Global Development Group
PostgreSQL is best used for structured data, and best when following relational database design principles. I would not use PostgreSQL for large unstructured data such as video, images, sound files, xml documents, web-pages, especially if these files have their own highly variable, internal structure.
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SAP
SAP BW/4HANA is certainly an excellent choice when it comes to setting up a data warehousing platform within a landscape of existing SAP systems ecosystem for realizing quick time to value and ROI over the long term. Many non-SAP analytics tools such as Power BI , Qlik also now offer connectors to leverage SAP BW/4HANA data as additional options to deploy third party visualization tools which make it a more open ended platform of choice. But with the future roadmap of SAP and industry in general being focused towards cloud based offerings (SAC and Datasphere) infused with AI capabilities one has to make a judicious choice among these depending on the use case, capabilities of platforms and existing systems landscape and the overall long term IT strategy. SAP BW/4HANA may not be a good platform of choice if starting a native greenfield data warehousing implementation with cloud first approach which would require data integration across SAP and Non-SAP sources and one should consider other SAP cloud offerings which however still have some time to reach a level of maturity as SAP BW/4HANA has reached over the years.
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Pros
PostgreSQL Global Development Group
  • It works well with external data sources and runs on platforms with stable performance.
  • Clients can rest assured that their personal information will be safe and secure.
  • Many forums discuss setup and usage, and most are free.
  • Adding tooling applications to a computer is unlimited.
  • PostgreSQL runs on many OS platforms and supports ANSI SQL, stored procedures, and triggers.
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SAP
  • With ODP based extraction, SAP BW/4HANA does well to integrate the data from various source systems like S4HANA , S4C.
  • With composite providers having the ability to integrate HANA calculation views, we are able to make the best of use of both application layer and data base layer(HANA) for mixed modelling scenarios.
  • with data tiering optimization higher data volume are effectively handled as we have the option to control the amount of data that is being stored in HOT , Warm and cold storage. With data volume grows over the year, DTO comes in handy solution to automatically move the delta to appropriate area based on temporature.
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Cons
PostgreSQL Global Development Group
  • Clearer indications on what is the query plan, to optimize the query
  • More out of the box, Postgres specific, SQL functions
  • It would be nice to have a more visual aid of the relationship between all tables, but possibly this depend more on the UI used
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SAP
  • Better integration with HANA layer with BW/4HANA application
  • Flexibility to provide more secure API's to interact with non-sap Data bases
  • Integration with Gsheets as well like Excel(AFO) and introduce better reporting integration with various reporting tools.
  • Evolution to provide better data lake , data brick options like in BDC
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Likelihood to Renew
PostgreSQL Global Development Group
As a needed software for day to day development activities
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SAP
No answers on this topic
Usability
PostgreSQL Global Development Group
Postgresql is the best tool out there for relational data so I have to give it a high rating when it comes to analytics, data availability and consistency, so on and so forth. SQL is also a relatively consistent language so when it comes to building new tables and loading data in from the OLTP database, there are enough tools where we can perform ETL on a scalable basis.
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SAP
SAP BW/4HANA requires specialized skillsets around data warehouse modeling and the access to data, however the modeling capabilities are intuitive and have now become accessible to both SAP and non-SAP data warehouse specialists. This new model allows for Interchangeable skillsets and access to a broader pool of experts throughout the industry, as well as easier access to data.
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Reliability and Availability
PostgreSQL Global Development Group
PostgreSQL's availability is top notch. Apart from connection time-out for an idle user, the database is super reliable.
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SAP
No answers on this topic
Performance
PostgreSQL Global Development Group
The data queries are relatively quick for a small to medium sized table. With complex joins, and a wide and deep table however, the performance of the query has room for improvement.
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SAP
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
PostgreSQL Global Development Group
There are several companies that you can contract for technical support, like EnterpriseDB or Percona, both first level in expertise and commitment to the software.
But we do not have contracts with them, we have done all the way from googling to forums, and never have a problem that we cannot resolve or pass around. And for dozens of projects and more than 15 years now.
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SAP
SAP Max Attention and general support for SAP BW/4HANA is broadly available. Truth to be told, MaxAttention has a premium cost but brings great engineers. So this being an enterprise capability and extremely critical, we did not consider cost as the main factor since support works well. Just keep that in mind when making your selection.
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Online Training
PostgreSQL Global Development Group
The online training is request based. Had there been recorded videos available online for potential users to benefit from, I could have rated it higher. The online documentation however is very helpful. The online documentation PDF is downloadable and allows users to pace their own learning. With examples and code snippets, the documentation is great starting point.
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SAP
No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
PostgreSQL Global Development Group
The online documentation of the PostgreSQL product is elaborate and takes users step by step.
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SAP
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
PostgreSQL Global Development Group
Although the competition between the different databases is increasingly aggressive in the sense that they provide many improvements, new functionalities, compatibility with complementary components or environments, in some cases it requires that it be followed within the same family of applications that performs the company that develops it and that is not all bad, but being able to adapt or configure different programs, applications or other environments developed by third parties apart is what gives PostgreSQL a certain advantage and this diversification in the components that can be joined with it, is the reason why it is a great option to choose.
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SAP
SAP BW / 4HANA and SAP IQ are both used for warehouse; with quick consultations for business analysis and that allows us to obtain dashboards and KPIs efficiently. SAP IQ is columnar and SAP BW / 4HANA immemorial. SAP BW / 4HANA was selected for the response speed of the queries since it saves the information in cache.
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Scalability
PostgreSQL Global Development Group
The DB is reliable, scalable, easy to use and resolves most DB needs
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SAP
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
PostgreSQL Global Development Group
  • Easy to administer so our DevOps team has only ever used minimal time to setup, tune, and maintain.
  • Easy to interface with so our Engineering team has only ever used minimal time to query or modify the database. Getting the data is straightforward, what we do with it is the bigger concern.
  • It's free. You can't beat that.
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SAP
  • SAP BW/4HANA has been immensely helpful in eliminating alternate silos of data creation by business users thereby ensuring data integrity and consistency across the organization. The focus is now more on data analysis as opposed to data preparation in spreadsheets saving users hours of laborious manual work in collating data.
  • We have been able to quickly integrate and leverage data from multiple SAP systems into SAP BW/4HANA to drive holistic decision making within the organization including streamlining the month end close process using BPC.
  • Excel friendly reporting tools such as Analysis for Office have made it much easier for user adoption and training making change management much easier and change the culture within the organization.
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ScreenShots

SAP BW/4HANA Screenshots

Screenshot of Next generation data warehousing with SAP BW/4HANA.Screenshot of SAP BW/4HANA user cockpit.Screenshot of Geolocation analytics in SAP BW/4HANA.Screenshot of Data modeling in SAP BW/4HANA.Screenshot of Modern user experience in SAP BW/4HANA.Screenshot of Monitor the performance of your business in real-time with SAP BW/4HANA.