DataWorks:Purchasing guide

Select a DataWorks edition

This is the license fee for using the platform's features. It determines which advanced development, governance, and operations and maintenance (O&M) capabilities you can use.

• Basic Edition: Provides core development and scheduling features. This edition is suitable for new users or individual developers.

• Standard/Professional/Enterprise Edition: Provide more powerful standard features. You can switch from the Basic Edition to these advanced editions as needed.

• Value-added feature (Intelligent Data Modeling): As an independent feature module, Intelligent Data Modeling supports Dimensional Modeling. You can use it to perform Data Warehouse Planning, develop and manage corporate data standards, perform dimensional modeling, and define data metrics to build a data warehouse.

  For information about software fees, see Software Version Selection and Billing and Intelligent Data Modeling Billing.

  Edition	Recommended users	Recommended scenarios	Core features
  Basic Edition	Students, individual developers, and startup teams	POC: Quickly verify the feasibility of data projects. Develop non-critical and small-scale data applications. Start your data development journey cost-effectively.	Provides capabilities such as migrating data to the cloud, basic development and scheduling, and simple data governance to meet requirements for quick verification and lightweight data processing.
  Standard Edition	Small enterprises, production service assurance departments, and pilot business departments	Build an enterprise data quality monitoring system. Handle core business data flows in production environments. Collaborate on and manage enterprise data.	Enhanced enterprise-level data management with capabilities like data lineage analysis and tag management. Supports business continuity and stability with intelligent baseline alerting.
  Professional Edition	Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and high-SLA business departments	Data security and compliance requirements Manage complex business processes and multi-party collaboration. Ensure high service level agreement (SLA) for assets.	Enhances data security with features like data masking and access control. Integrates business-oriented data management and improves development-side access and collaboration.
  Enterprise Edition (Recommended)	Medium-to-large enterprises and corporate headquarters	Build an enterprise-grade data middle platform architecture. Implement unified resource control across multiple business lines. Perform fine-grained cost and resource management.	Provides complete, systematic, and built-in best practices for full-lifecycle data governance, covering development, O&M, quality, security, and assets. Supports multi-account permission management through CloudSSO. Offers enterprise-oriented openness and customization with a full range of open APIs, event messaging, and extension mechanisms.

Select a resource group and billing method

A resource group is the core of your running costs. It covers the cost of computing resources consumed when you perform tasks such as data development and Data Integration. DataWorks recommends that you use Serverless resource groups instead of legacy resource groups, such as exclusive resource groups and public resource groups. Serverless resource groups offer two billing methods. You can flexibly choose and switch between these two billing methods based on the stability of your business payload.

• Pay-as-you-go serverless resource group: You are billed based on the duration of the compute units (CUs) you use. This method is highly elastic and suitable for scenarios with fluctuating business volumes.

• Subscription serverless resource group: You purchase a fixed amount of CUs in advance at a lower unit price. This method is suitable for scenarios with stable and continuous computing needs.

  For a detailed comparison of the billing methods for Serverless resource groups, see Billing methods.

Estimate and note additional fees

• Other fees: These fees cover advanced services such as intelligent monitoring and Data Quality. These services usually provide a free quota. Usage that exceeds the free quota is billed based on your actual usage.

• Big data compute engine and storage fees (billed separately): DataWorks is a big data development and scheduling platform. It does not perform core computing and storage tasks. When you submit an SQL task through DataWorks, the task is executed by an underlying compute engine, such as MaxCompute, Hologres, or E-MapReduce. The generated data is also stored in the corresponding service, such as MaxCompute or OSS.

  For more information about the billing of common engines, see MaxCompute billing, Hologres billing, and E-MapReduce billing.

Scenario 1: Individual developers or new users

• Recommended configuration: Basic Edition software + Pay-as-you-go Serverless resource group.

  

• Reasons:

  • Zero-cost startup: The Basic Edition software is completely free. This lets you learn and use all the core development features of DataWorks at no cost.

  • Controllable costs: With a pay-as-you-go resource group, you are not charged for resources that you do not use. When you perform a small number of tests and development tasks, the cost is low. This perfectly matches the needs of the learning and exploration phase.

Scenario 2: Small to medium-sized teams or rapidly growing businesses

• Recommended configuration: Standard or Professional Edition software + Pay-as-you-go Serverless resource group (consider switching to a subscription).

  

• Reasons:

  • Full-link development and governance capabilities: The Standard Edition builds on the core development capabilities of the Basic Edition. It provides SLA assurance for critical tasks through baseline alerting and fine-grained kinship analysis down to the field level. This allows your data production to enter a standardized and reliable team collaboration phase. The Professional Edition builds on the reliable O&M of the Standard Edition. It helps you achieve automatic data masking for sensitive data and proactive threat monitoring. This establishes a systematic, enterprise-level data security and governance framework.

  • Balances elasticity and cost: The task volume during the business growth phase may still fluctuate. A pay-as-you-go resource group is a safe starting choice. After the runtime and resource consumption of core extract, transform, and load (ETL) tasks stabilize, you can switch to a subscription model to lock in lower long-term running costs.

Scenario 3: Large enterprises or data mid-end construction

• Recommended configuration: Enterprise Edition software + Intelligent Data Modeling (value-added module) + Mixed-mode resource groups (mainly subscription, supplemented by pay-as-you-go).

  

• Reasons:

  • Build an enterprise-level system: The Enterprise Edition provides a comprehensive data governance center, advanced security controls, and open platform capabilities. It is the cornerstone for building a standardized, secure, and scalable data mid-end. Combined with Intelligent Data Modeling, it helps you implement data standards and ensure the long-term value of your data assets.

  • Achieve ultimate cost optimization: For core ETL pipelines with stable workloads in an enterprise, you can use subscription resource groups to maximize cost savings. At the same time, you can maintain a pay-as-you-go resource group to handle temporary or burst analysis queries or testing tasks. This mixed mode achieves the best balance of performance, elasticity, and cost.