Opinions please

[swarddb]

We are looking at BO and Cognos and a few other tools for our data warehouse project. Please let me know why you guys and gals went with BO over other tools and what your success has been with support, instalation and ease of end-user use.

thanks much!

 

[nlim]

Hi there, did you check out MicroStrategy as well? They released some new platform technology last June, not the 16-bit crap they had from years ago. It's quite good apparently.
N

 

[zahiduk]

We went with Business Objects as it integrates well with SQL Server among other database/olap servers. Also, we can use our existing skills in VBA and ASP in implementing it.

Another company to look at is SAS. (

http://www.sas.com)

 

[jjl]

The security features were a major selling point. No other product offered the depth of environment control, i.e. module access, data access, etc.. For example, in Business Objects data access can be set at the user level, i.e. for Jane Doe always generate the 'sales.state = California' where clause when Jane runs a query that accesses the sales table. Also, Business Objects is more adept at complex queries, i.e. pulling data from diverse data sources into a single report, correlated sub query SQL generation, union/minus/intersect, etc.. Some products, i.e. Micro Strategy, require very specific database structures, sometimes requiring a redesign of the database. Business Objects does not.

Another selling point is user friendliness. We've found that a well-designed universe can be very successfully navigated and utilized by non-technical business experts.

 

[BobWard]

Business Objects provides a more complete product suite and the functionality it provides puts it ahead of the competion. It copes with complex database designs unlike other tools e.g. chasam traps. BusinessObjects also has fantastic addon availabe including setanalyzer. When looking at BusinessObjects you should also look at a third party product called info-portal (

http://www.blueedgesoftware.co

) which integrates well with BusinessObjects to expand on the ease of use and ability to meet the true information requirements of the majority of information consumers.

 

[nlim]

Business Objects has a "tools" mentality which allows their products to do many things, but requires the user to learn lots of stuff. For example, to link two data providers, users have to learn about "linking" the schemas together. Once you can train all your users to do these things, it's quite easy to use, (and also easy to forget how to use...) Another thing about their database support is that BO does it well by making the administrator define all the customization in the BO metadata layer. So if your database changes, even like a simple table name change, you must redefine all the reports.

For security, jjl's example of sales.state = 'california' is the perfect example. if sales table changes to Sales1 table, you must change the security for each user for this sales1 table by hand. BTW, there's a web security flaw in BO's webintelligence product. Most web security experts will tell you that you should not have any database connectivity on the web server. This prevents any web hackers from getting information about your database, user ids and passwords etc...WebIntelligence requires a database connection on the webserver, and is a no-no. AmericanExpress security experts gave us a big headache on this topic...

BO has bad technical support hence the proliferation of discussion forums to solve problems their tech support cannot. from the business objects user conference, their tech support had a rating of less than 40%!