Can someone highlight the pros and cons of Focus vs. BO/WebIntelligence? We use BO but are looking at a Financial Package that uses Web Focus for reporting.
Thanks!
Rana Kassel (BOB member since 2002-06-21)
Rana: I’ve never used Web Focus, but I’m going to go ahead and put your topic into the “General Discussion” area for BusObj. There are quite a few folks that don’t make it down to Off Topic, and this question deserves more attention. Thanks.
Dave
Dave Rathbun 
(BOB member since 2002-06-06)
We have used WebFocus for about 5 years, but only the Windows PC product (no server involved; we use the desktop power reporter and odbc to connect directly to our data warehouse.) We’ve had Business Objects in for about 2 years. Here’s my observations. Business Objects is a much easier tool for users to learn, primarily because of the universe, which insulates the user from having to know the tables, joins, etc. It is a powerful, versatile reporting tool, and has many great built in features. WebFocus, on the other hand, is better at handling large amounts of output and at allowing you to manipulating data. I have a fairly large group of power users who refuse to give WebFocus up, because they can control and manipulate data output exactly the way they need it. One thing that drives me crazy is how difficult it is to match up data out of multiple data providers. WebFocus does that kind of thing easily. My .02.
kris foral (BOB member since 2002-06-24)
We’ve also got both products inhouse. WebFocus is a nice transition for your MF (mainframe) programmers to make towards web based reporting. It does some pretty cool stuff with precalculations and can pass thru the cube multiple times. Kris is also right about the d.p. syncronization. It’s something Focus (both mainframe and WebFocus) does pretty well. We also find that WebFocus programers make the jump to Business Objects pretty easily.
Chris Pohl (BOB member since 2002-06-18)