With the availability of wide range of BI products / tools, customers are perplexed in finding the right BI tools that suite their business needs. In the quest to find this out, we end up gathering information about various BI tools; still comparing them is often more tricky.
Here is an attempt to put together the comparison between the 3 major Bi giants –BO, Cognos and MSTR.Business Objects XI | Cognos | Micro Statergy | |
Platform Architecture | Good offline analytical capabilities. ensures data quality and lineage, closely integrated with other BI tools lower level of integration within the platform | No offline analytical capabilities Complete Performance management system on a single SOA platform | |
Data Access | Heterogeneous - provides good ETL tools to manage inconsistent data | Heterogeneous – Uses CMM ( Common Metadata Model) | |
Business Focus | what-if analysis available besides traditional BI reporting. Vertical solutions growing up after acquisition by SAP. | Industry specific packaged solutions available ( as blue prints ) **Key soln - Performance Mgmt | Packaged solutions not available. |
Query Reporting | Integrated tool - Web Intelligence – for end user queries, reporting and analysis Xcelsius - for interactive visual reporting | 3 tools : Query Studio – for data query Report Studio – for reporting Analysis Studio – for Data analysis | When using 100TB plus data – MSTR is more beneficial. |
Product Line | Integrated. | Not Integrated Each additional product means additional metadata and security to administer and another interface for end users to learn. | More cohesive With 3 components application server, web server and an automated mail services server. |
Workflow | Business Objects supports "Analyze then Query" and "Query then analyze" and any other permutation User is in control - and s/he remains in the same product. The user is always in the right product. | Supports "Analyze then Query". End user is limited in workflow as (Power Play is for OLAP and Impromptu for Reporting ) An end user cannot reverse the workflow. Moving from Impromptu to Power Play requires transformer. | Integrated product and hence good workflow. |
Deployment | Easy to deploy. | Difficult to deploy to the enterprise. Impromptu is not deployable (as semantic layer is file based ) PowerPlay is not deployable (as it prevents end users from accessing the data they need, when they need it). | Easy to deploy. |
Min Server Configuration required | • 2.0 GHz Pentium 4-class processor • 2 GB RAM • 4.9 GB hard disk space for BusinessObjects Enterprise • 1 GB hard disk space for BusinessObjects Enterprise (Win32 Clients) • 0.2 GB hard disk space for BusinessObjects Live Office • 0.2 GB hard disk space for BusinessObjects Process Tracker | RAM : Minimum: 512 MB Recommended: 1 GB Disk space Minimum: 1 GB of free space on the drive that contains the temporary directory | •1Ghz or higher Pentium Compatible (Min 450 MHz) • 512 MB or higher RAM (min 128 MB ),1GB(min 500 MB) |
Graphs / point an click | Supports point & click graphing. Only Basic graph models available. | More specialized charts, such as Pareto charts, Point charts, gauge, funnel, scatter, dot density, waterfall, etc.. | Provides Point & click graphing Supports a wide range of graph/chart types. Eg. Area – Horizontal absolute Funnel – Standard Pareto – Standard |
Unbalanced Hierarchies | Hierarchical grouping is supported | Not supported | |
Drill Down/ Drill Up Features | Drill Up/ Drill Down are supported | Drill Down\Drill Up feature is supported by Cognos Transformer only. Can use both, the Transformer and Report together to achieve Drill up/down | Supports Drill Up/ Drill Down |
Drill through | Drill Through is supported | Create a drill-through report to link two reports containing related information. Can then access related or more detailed information in one report by selecting a value in another report. | Supports Drill through |
Control Breaks (Sub and Group Totals) | Control breaks and Sub/Group Totals are supported. Some Sub totals require workarounds in Webi (as folding options are not available) | Allows to add summaries at any of the group level. Can create sections for breaking the data. | Supports Control Breaks through zones. Also subtotal and group total. |
Supported Report Types | Cross-tab, conditional, top N/bottom N, summary/drill-down, form,mailing label, OLAP, Subreports, Graphs, What-if Analysis | Report Studio supports the following report types : 1. List 2. Cross Tab 3, Charts, 4. Multipage statement layout, Can also combine one or more of these in single reports. | Scorecards and Dashboards, Managed Metrics Reports, Production and Operational Reports, Invoices and Statements, Business Report,Datamining and predictive reports. |
On Fly Calculation | Supports on the fly calculations | On-the-fly calculations are possible in query studio. | Only when using the OLAP Analysis as the source |
Support for Sub Reports | Supported | Sub reports are supported using different queries in the same report as a master-details query. | N/A |
Partial Result Support | Supported | Partial result can be retrieved through filters and prompts. Or using the row limit. | |
Support for re-usable components/ template creation | Not supported in Webi Intelligence. Supported in | Yes. Any report which developed in report studio can be used as a template to any other report/ all reports layouts are available | Can create Common report objects for reuse through templates. |
Automated Time Dimension Rollups | Supports time dependency and hierarchy navigation | Not possible in report | Supports Time Series Intelligence |
Incremental Refresh | Not Supported | This is only possible for Cognos Cubes not for any other areas. | Not possible since it is a ROLAP Model. |
Read & Write | Supports only read facility. Does not support Write back | Supports only read facility. Does not support Write back | Supports Write back to databases using MSTR Transactor. |
Metadata Maintainability | Metadata is stored in the database. New tool, Repository Diagnostic Tool scans for and repairs inconsistencies that may occur in metadata in Business Objects repository. | Content store (Metadata DB) uses Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, or DB2 UDB. But the content Store database must be utf-8. General Database back ups should be taken regularly. | Reusable object oriented metadata |
Statistical/Financial/Time Series Analysis | Statistical functions are supported. Time Series Analysis such as 'MTD', 'QTD', 'YTD' is possible | All Statistical functions are available in report studio like SD, Var, Avg etc. Powerplay transformer –has inbuilt categories such as 'MTD', 'QTD', 'YTD' | Supports statistical analysis and time series analysis using Intelligence server. Provides ready functions for calculating IRR< depreciation, present and future value etc. |
Print Format Control | Standard print format is supported by exporting reports to different format | More customized print format is possible. (If the output format is PDF, in the Paper Size box, select the page size; select the orientation of the report. Even If the output format is HTML, in the Maximum Rows box, type the maximum number of rows needed to appear on each report page.) | Print Format Control on both MSTR Agent and MSTR Web (options like Page Ordering, Header & Footer and margins are available) |
Caching of results | Supports caching at Server level. | Server builds an in-memory cache to service many requests without requiring database access. | Supports automatic shared caches. |
Fax and Autofax / Voice Mail | Not Supported | Not Supported | Supports through Information transmitters |
