Apache Pig vs. IBM Db2 Big SQL

Apache Pig is best suited for ETL-based data processes. It is good in performance in handling and analyzing a large amount of data. it gives faster results than any other similar tool. It is easy to implement and any user with some initial training or some prior SQL knowledge can work on it. Apache Pig is proud to have a large community base globally.

Incentivized

IBM Db2 is a legacy database and is primarily great for supporting certain legacy applications. It's simply not as competitive as many solutions on the market now.

Incentivized

• Iterative Development - you can write aliases/variables, which are not immediately executed and these are stored in a DAG, which is only evaluated upon dumping or storing another alias.
• Fast execution - Works with MapReduce, Tez, or Spark execution frameworks to provide fast run times at large scales.
• Local and remote interoperability - Scripts that depend on testing a small dataset locally before moving to the full thing can simply be done with "pig -x local."

Incentivized

• data storage
• data manipulation
• data definitions
• data reliability

Incentivized

• May not fit every need and a SQL-like abstraction may be more effective for some tasks (look at Spark-SQL, Hive, or even an actual DBMS)
• All Pig jobs are written in a Domain Specific Language so not a lot of transferable knowledge
• Writing your own User Defined Functions (UDFS) is a nice feature but can be painful to implement in practice

Incentivized

• Cloud readiness.
• Ease of implementation.

Incentivized

It is quick, fast and easy to implement Apache Pig which makes is quite popular to be used.

Incentivized

IBM DB2 is a solid service but hasn't seen much innovation over the past decade. It gets the job done and supports our IT operations across digital so it is fair.

Incentivized

The documentation is adequate. I'm not sure how large of an external community there is for support.

Incentivized

IBM did a good job of supporting us during our evaluation and proof of concept. They were able to provide all necessary guidance, answer questions, help us architect it, etc. We were pleased with the support provided by the vendor. I will caveat and say this support was all before the sale, however, we have a ton of IBM products and they provide the same high level of support for all of them. I didn't see this being any different. I give IBM support two thumbs up!

Incentivized

It takes me less time to write a Pig script than get a Spark program running for batch ETL workloads. Compared to Spark, Pig has a steeper learning curve because it employs a proprietary programming language. In one script and one fine, it can handle both Map Reduce and Hadoop. It has a large amount of documentation available to make learning more convenient.

Incentivized

MS SQL Server was ruled out given we didn't feel we could collapse environments. We thought of MS-SQL as more of a one for one replacement for Sybase ASE, i.e., server for server. SAP HANA was evaluated and given a big thumbs up but was rejected because the SQL would have to be rewritten at the time (now they have an accelerator so you don't have to). Also, there was a very low adoption rate within the enterprise. IBM DB2 Big SQL was not selected even though technically it achieved high scores, because we could not find readily available talent and low adoption rate within the enterprise (basically no adoption at the time). We ended up selecting Exadata because of the high adoption rate within the enterprise even though technically HANA and Big SQL were superior in our evaluations.

Incentivized

• Return on Investments are significant considering what it can do with traditional analysis techniques. But, other alternatives like Apache Spark, Hive being more efficient, it is hard to stick to Apache Pig.
• It can handle large datasets pretty easily compared to SQL. But, again, alternatives are more efficient.
• While working on unstructured, decentralized dataset, Pig is highly beneficial, as it is not a complete deviation from SQL, but it does not take you in complexity MapReduce as well.

Incentivized

• Performance gains were positive.
• Finding resources on the street with knowledge at the time was hard.

Incentivized