Posted on 06/21/2011 6:39:21 AM PDT by Cronos
I last used Cognos version 7 years ago and then was working on Business Objects XI R3. Now I need to compare these to run on Oracle, DB2 and Teradata.
To my technical mind, I am more inclined to Cognos as it gives more control both for the technically minded report creator to run and also for the administrators to limit what a user can or can't do with the system
On the other hand, Business Objects, especially it's web intelligence aspect makes it easy for extremely technophobic business users to create sufficiently complex reports.
As far as the database interaction, I haven't really checked how the multi-threading would work on say an Oracle solution as opposed to Teradata's MPP.
Does anyone have any experience comparing these two together? I'd also look for non-techie opinions (which are quite valuable!)
I’ve worked with both. I prefer business objects because of the web interface and in general it seems a little more intuitive.
bflr
When I first worked on Business Objects I was irked that it didn't allow me to play with the back-end as easily as Cognos or Crystal reports and I used to tweak the sql quite a bit
Was that your experience too?
I've always liked Business Objects, and I'm not sure I understand your statement, "play with the back end." You can change virtually any BO query to use your own SQL; i.e., you're not limited to what the graphic report designer gives you. This opens you up to all sorts of unions, sub-queries, aliases, etc. As with any query, you can also easily insert prompts into your user-defined SQL.
I've worked as both a business user AND a techie, and find that Business Objects is still my favorite query & reporting tool. Perhaps the security is not everything anyone would desire, but you can work with it. From what I recall, row-level security was most challenging. Anything more sophisticated would probably require separate database accounts for each user, with specific roles assigned.
I’ve been both a techie and a user. I was a programmer, but now I’m just a user. It has been a few years since I’ve had to code anything, so my response isn’t quite as technical as it once could have been. In general though, I’ve found most report writers, Crystal, Cognos, Business Objects are all pretty much the same. Good luck.
Business Objects - Have developed Crystal/BO since version 8.5 and 6.5
Currently on a BO 3.0 development gig...
Thank you for your response! That was helpful.
Well, I mean that BO seemed to be more configured to a business user rather than a techie. For instance, to create a grouping by statement or if you have a list of rows that you wish to order into columns, you have to play with variables or get actual physical tables created
what’s your opinion on the merits of each? Also, do you have any experience with the connetivity and if that has any noticeable performance differences between the two? In both my previous roles, we had separate DBA teams who were more or less murky and secretive!
Personally, I think BO is a good blend of both. The casual business user can quickly run a pre-defined report, or build an ad-hoc query. The can also graphically organize the data into sections, apply simple sorts, and easily filter data. I'd say anyone who can manipulate data in an Excel spreadsheet is more than capable of working in the BO environment.
The more technical user can start their query graphically, then edit the SQL to add groupings, sorts, etc. (They can also go directly to the SQL builder, and copy & paste their queries; BO will then use that for its execution.
p.s. the "Edit SQL" capability can be restricted by security settings, if you so desire. Plus, the edit SQL and ad-hoc query builder is available in both the desktop and Web versions.
While I can't speak for Cognos, building "connections" in BusinessObjects is very straightforward. If you have the database account, and you enter the connection parameters correctly, you won't have any problems.
As far as performance, I recommend keeping most of your database-intensive operations on the database server, rather than on the client PC. You can format BO reports to sort, group, find top ten, etc. Those are all operations that perform better on the server, especially with large result sets.
I would also say that if your database isn't optimized, no reporting tool will improve that. You most certainly want to use indexes on your database in the same way a user may construct a query. Also, a transactional database won't perform as well as a data warehouse--one optimzed for queries. (Still, I've found that you can get decent reporting performance from a transactional database.)
My company was using Crystal Reports, and moved to Business Objects in the past year. Along with this, we have always produced some reports using SAS. The move was made because the powers that be were told that we could create reports that the users in the field would be able to run themselves. Unfortunately, they neglected to mention that some of the things we were doing with SAS would not be possible in the new system. So, I am still having to create some reports in SAS. I am not sure if the limitations are due to the actual software, or the way the DB is configured, but I find it humorous that we are still having to develop things in the software I suggested we use all along (SAS).
Business objects is extemely picky about version and fix patch synchronization including database drivers
I've worked with Sqlserver / Oracle / DB2 and as long as the drivers are right you will have no issues with BO connectivity.
True, but if one has security functions (say to mask certain data based on user names in a table), this can be over-ridden through SQL by even a novice who has the ability)
The connectivity bit I meant was more around the realm of: both can use the standard LDAP or SSO or ODBC/JDBC to connect, but have you noticed any "differences" (I'm not even sure what I mean by that! :)?
oooh-ooh, not a good idea. My previous company (a 300,000 employee financial co) went the other way -- we gave BO-WebI access to all and people were using it to generate their standard reports.
Business Objects fails badly for that purpose -- the consumers of such reports just want quick reports available, they don't care about and don't know how to do anything more than 2/3 clicks. Crystal reports is far better for that
We switched to making it 4 tier in XI R2 -- Crystal reports available via a customised web-page for standardised reports, WebI for a bit more savvy users, Desktop Intelligence for power-users and Dashboards for executives.
SAS - Business Objects is quite impossible for say heavy duty actuarial calculations in my opinion. If you need to number crunch and do deep-dive data mining, SAS scores
I don't know if Business Objects has any tools that could help that -- does anyone else know? And Cognos?
That said, my advice is to go with the reporting tool that gets the professional IT department out of the way of end user ad hoc reporting requests. If Business Objects is more intuitive for users to craft their own queries, while still giving the techie the tools to craft optimized SQL, then that's the direction you want to go.
However, Teradata can be (or was back then) quite finicky about how it processed SQL if the way the data is distributed across the amps doesn't align to the way that end users build, merge, and sort, "simple" queries. The techie will understand the way the data is distributed, and code the SQL to maximize the power of the Teradata platform. If you're not careful, you could end up with degraded Teradata performance if the Business Objects SQL causes large tables to be constantly redistributed across the Teradata amps.
At least those were the issues I observed in the early 1990s.
-PJ
-PJ
good advice. Thank you!
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