Oracle's BI server compared to MS's BI offering

We just had a presentation from an Oracle salesman showing off their BI solution. Now I haven't done anything with Microsoft's BI solution, but we do have SQL 2005 Enterprise here as well as Sharepoint and SQL Reporting. Since I've worked sith SQL Reporting, and a little with Sharepoint, I was thinking it should be more cost effective to go with that.

Some of the things management liked from the presentation:

User Created Reports - You have filtered data columns you can drag and drop into a report, and then tell the software to generate a graph/chart.

Data Filtering? - They showed this only briefly, but it was their tool to take your datasource (Oracle, MS SQL, SAP, etc.) from the right side of the screen, drop the columns into the middle window to do your filtering, then a left panel for your output. (Didn't get a good look since it was up only briefly.)

What are your thoughts?

user created reports: i have not used it but MS SQL RS has that also...

lookup the help on it....  as i recall you create a "data model" for the users and they download a design tool that reads the data model and they use that to author a report.

the model lets you do some stuff to make it better for a non-dba to make reports and not have to know all the tables in the system.

Vendors will frequently tout User Report Creation as an asset.  In practice it is more of a liability. Most of the tools that I have seen are terrible.  I would rather have one or more analyst creating and verifying reports than having management types guessing the cardinality of data relations.

I would not consider turnkey reports user-created.  By turnkey, I mean to say reports that have been created beforehand where the user can change one or more variables used to supply information for the report.

Personally, I would go with Tableau.

figuerres said:

user created reports: i have not used it but MS SQL RS has that also...

lookup the help on it....  as i recall you create a "data model" for the users and they download a design tool that reads the data model and they use that to author a report.

 

the model lets you do some stuff to make it better for a non-dba to make reports and not have to know all the tables in the system.

figuerres, this sounds like part of what I'm looking for... but I'm still not sure where to look. What do you mean by 'lookup the help on it'?

For my SQL reports, I use visual studio, and post them to the SQL Report Server we host. Our users aren't going to use Visual Studio...

qwert231 said:

figuerres said:

*snip*

figuerres, this sounds like part of what I'm looking for... but I'm still not sure where to look. What do you mean by 'lookup the help on it'?

 

For my SQL reports, I use visual studio, and post them to the SQL Report Server we host. Our users aren't going to use Visual Studio...

You could use Access 2003's reporting features, which are pretty nifty when you use *.adp against a SQL Server. Too bad they gimped it in 2007 and seemingly removed it entirely in 2010.

qwert231 said:

figuerres said:

*snip*

figuerres, this sounds like part of what I'm looking for... but I'm still not sure where to look. What do you mean by 'lookup the help on it'?

 

For my SQL reports, I use visual studio, and post them to the SQL Report Server we host. Our users aren't going to use Visual Studio...

I think the tool you are after for the SQL Server Reporting Services stack is the SQL Server Report Builder. It is a Click Once application that lets users build reports based on a defined data model and then either publish them to a users area in Reporting Services or, if permissions allow to the public reports area.

You can find links to the standalone CTP build of version 3 in the sidebar here

As with ALL tools that I have come across for user report building this does need a data model to make the underlying database accessable but as a "free" tool it works as well as the competition.

qwert231 said:

figuerres said:

*snip*

figuerres, this sounds like part of what I'm looking for... but I'm still not sure where to look. What do you mean by 'lookup the help on it'?

 

For my SQL reports, I use visual studio, and post them to the SQL Report Server we host. Our users aren't going to use Visual Studio...

But they all know Excel. Excel works just fine with SQL Server.

ZippyV said:

qwert231 said:

*snip*

But they all know Excel. Excel works just fine with SQL Server.

The new self service BI stuff in R2 looks very promising.

CplCarrot said:

qwert231 said:

*snip*

I think the tool you are after for the SQL Server Reporting Services stack is the SQL Server Report Builder. It is a Click Once application that lets users build reports based on a defined data model and then either publish them to a users area in Reporting Services or, if permissions allow to the public reports area.

 

You can find links to the standalone CTP build of version 3 in the sidebar here

 

As with ALL tools that I have come across for user report building this does need a data model to make the underlying database accessable but as a "free" tool it works as well as the competition.

How does Report Builder work with SQL 2005?

qwert231 said:

CplCarrot said:

*snip*

How does Report Builder work with SQL 2005?

qwert:  same really, you build the model and they use the app ... just the new one is probably better / new features etc....

i would say that you want to plan on migrating to 2008 soon.... it has good new features and been out for a while now.

the enterprise manager for 2008 is really nice in some areas....

like it will show you if an index needs to be made and gives a link that opens a query window with the create index scripted for you to use.

also xml in sql is done very well - creates a link to open the xml much like the IE xml view.

and the 2008 manager can open a connection to the 2005 server w/o issues.

also a 2005 database can be detached from 2005 and attached to 2008 very easy.

so testing a move is not hard.

also 2008 reports have new features.