Limitaions of Cognos?

[saifnawaz]

Hi,
I am trying to do a comparitive study on the various BI tools available on the market.
Can anyone tell me the limitations they have faced using Cognos and by which factors are other BI tools better than cognos.
thx.

 

[john76]

IMO,

Cognos seems to be one of the best "all around" suites, but this is only really useful if your business tends to look at their business in a variety of ways. For example, Impromptu (which is being replaced by ReportNet, so my comments are dated) is a good program for flat reports, but other programs (such as Crystal Reports) are either more powerful or easier to use. However, Impromptu reports integrate well with cubes and visualizations and allow the user to drill from one to the other with ease.

So it really depends on your business needs. If you have a specific area that you are looking at (such as flat reports) then I am sure that you will find a program that is better and easier to use than Cognos, but if you need a variety of products then Cognos starts to look better due to the cross-product integration.

My company uses Cognos BTW, although I am giving you my honest opinion from what I have seen.

John

 

[goldsmt]

Cognos OLAP is amongst the best in the business, but the impromptu side of thing is looking dated. ReporNet is an improvement but is only availiable via a web interface and is aimed at large / enterprise scale businesses only.

Although the web is the way to go you are not going to get the same functionality you will get with a full windows client, in both OLAP and standard reporting it is obvious that all of the Cognos R&D budget is aimed at the web based products.

In addition I think future developments of reportnet will include OLAP functionality as well

 

[johnherman]

One significant problem with Cognos is the Impromptu catalog's limitation to one database.

There are also other problems/difficulties with Impromptu.

Agree with goldsmt that Power Play is a good OLAP tool.

Another problem with Cognos is that the web (IWR) and Client-Server versions of Impromptu do not have the same capabilities, and look and feel. Same with Power Play web and Power Play Client-Server.

Can drive the power user or developer nuts when you find something you can do in C-S but not on the web version.

Sometimes the grass is greener on the other side because there is more manure there - original.

 

[swarnapuri]

Hi,

I am also in a similar situation. Can someone point me to any info which compares existing BI products (ETL, Reports, OLAP)?

Regards,
Vinod

 

[flex13]

ReportNet allows you to connect to multiple databases. Impromptu/PowerPlay client definitely have more functionality than IWR/PPES becasue these are web based products which are bound by a more constricting web environment.
This being said, ReportNet allows you almost all of the client functionality but in a web environment.

ReportNet is definitely the web reporting solution of the future.