Business Intelligence Reporting Tool Overview

1
Business Intelligence Reporting Tool Overview

• Business Objects
• Cognos

2
Business Objects

• Business Objects was founded in 1990
• Business Object has primarily been a leader in
  front-end reporting
• Business Objects took over Crystal Reports and
  then was bought out by SAP in early 2008
• The two main products we will briefly cover are
  Crystal Xcelsius and Adhoc Reporting

3
Adhoc Reporting

• Business Objects has always been a tool that
  queries the live database
• It uses a Metadata repository that are referred
  to as universes
• The universes are created with pre-defined joins
• Once the universes are completed, a user can
  bring attributes and objects into reports and
  there is no SQL required
• Metadata and definitions of objects can be
  inputted into the universes to assist users

4
Adhoc Reporting

• Advantages of Business Objects
• It is always reporting on the most up to date
  data because it goes after the relational model
• The users will not get into a huge amount of
  trouble because the SQL is very controlled
• Disadvantages of Business Objects
• At the time of XI R2, the metadata definitions
  for columns did not adhere to metadata standards
  so all definitions would have to be put in by
  hand
• Since it is always going against the database,
  performance issues could arise
• Until Xcelsius wasnt leading in visualization
  and dashboarding

5
Crystal Xcelsius

• Crystal Xcelsius is a dash boarding and
  visualization tool
• It uses Flash technology to represent gauges,
  charts, graphs, etc.
• The dash boards are context sensitive. If a
  filter is changed, then the rest of the dash
  board will change as well

6
Crystal Xcelsius

• The early generations of Crystal Xcelsius would
  take data from Excel spread sheets and help
  visualize data
• Good first step
• Issues around loading of spread sheet and was not
  ready for enterprise releases
• Today using query as a web service, a web service
  will go out and query the database.
• Eliminates the extra hops to Excel
• Easier maintenance of the data

7
Crystal Xcelsius

• Crystal Xcelsius advantages
• Very nice representation, and excellent
  visualization
• Uses well accepted web standards so content is
  easy to display
• Disadvantages of Xcelsius
• The Query as a web service is still in its
  infancy so there are still hurdles
• It is just starting to make a foot hold in the
  market place and

8
Crystal Xcelsius Example

• Show Word Document

9
Cognos Discussion

• Cognos was founded as Quasar in 1969 in
  headquartered in Ottawa Canada
• Quasar became Cognos in 1992
• Cognos has always considered itself a best of
  breed tool around analytics and reporting
• IBM bought Cognos in January of 2008

10
Cognos Overview

• Prior to Cognos 8, Cognos used cube technology
• This meant that cubes were build from a database.
  Metrics were aggregated based on defined
  hierarchies
• User performance was much faster
• Slicing and dicing capability very good and easy
  to understand
• Cubes are much easier to take on the road so
  sales people would not have to be tied to the
  office

11
Cognos Overview

• With Cognos 8 and beyond, Cognos offered a tool
  that queried the database
• This offered an architecture similar to Business
  Objects and others
• People would not have to load cubes
• Congos also has a metadata layer where
  pre-determined paths are defined by a developer
• With databases being more powerful, user
  performance was less of an issue with the
  database
• With Cognos 8 Dash boarding and visualization
  features were offered that also went directly
  against the database
• Cubes are still available in Cognos, they just
  took a more minor role

12
Cognos Overview

• Cognos was a huge player in the cube market.
• This gave them an ability to always offer faster
  user performance
• They did not offer a tool that queried the
  database and this decreased the self service
  ability
• Once 8 came out, self service was greatly
  enhanced and a very nice meta layer was
  introduced to better define metrics and
  information

13
Cognos Overview

• Advantages of Cognos
• Ability to build cubes or query the database
  directly which maximizes flexibility
• Great visualization and dash board capability in
  Cognos 8
• Metadata layer adheres to Metadata standards so
  one can import and export metadata

14
Cognos Overview

• Disadvantages of Cognos
• Cognos 8 was a big change. Companies had a hard
  time upgrading
• Price, Cognos is one of the most expensive tools
  on the market
• Cognos does not have offer a separate product for
  just visualization. A company must by the whole
  BI package and then use the dash boarding piece