BO vs MicroStrategy or Cognos

general discussion
1

Hi,

Our company is due to purchase one of these WI products. I am familiar with BO but have no idea what are the MicroStrategy or Cognos products.

If you use one of these (MicroStrategy or Cognos) I would be glad to know the advantages and disadvantages comparing them with BO…

Thanks

Emile (BOB member since 2003-06-06)

2

There is a sticky topic in this forum where we’ve tried to keep a current list of all tool comparison discussions. Check here to view it. Good luck!

Cindy Clayton :us: (BOB member since 2002-06-11)

3

Hi , I read a bit about BO compatitors but nothing I found about MicroStrategy… has anyone actually seen this product ?

Emile (BOB member since 2003-06-06)

4

Hi

Further information can be found at www.microstrategy.co.uk. There is an extract of the 2003 Olap Survey 2003, which compares MS and BO.

Cheers

Nick

skam :uk: (BOB member since 2003-12-11)

5

I have seen that , but it is too biased. I want to have an independant opinion if possible…

Emile (BOB member since 2003-06-06)

6

I have seen it and infact worked on those three products… Has your company purchased BO??? What exactly are you looking at??? Its very difficult and not fair to compare BO Vs MS Vs Cognos straight forward due to their fundamental architecture and the way they do the reporting and analysis… All those fit into different area of the OLAP technology…It all boils down to one company’s requirement and what they are looking at for and also dont remember the cost… Having said those I will say each product as its own Advantages and you look at one feature in BO and you may not find in MS and the same vice versa…

Sridharan :india: (BOB member since 2002-11-08)

7

Hi Sridharan,

You are absolutely right, After a spending a week with MSTR I got the idea of that tool… It is absolutely true that they are quite different products…MSTR is a Data Modelling tool but for my managers atthe end of the day they see a report , doesnot care where it is comming form…

The company which is trying to sell MSTR initally confused me with that BO comparision and that is why I posted that topic but now I know how to deal with them…

BO is great, MSTR is interesting :wink:

Thanks a lot for the comments …

Emile (BOB member since 2003-06-06)

8

Emile,

I think you misread my topic… They are different products which I also agree but MSTR is not a Data Modelling Tool but a Business Intelligence Tool like BO, Cognos but with a different flavor and audience… Again each company will have their own Animation to show that there product is superior and I know it will be very biased one… Hope you get my point now…

Sridharan :india: (BOB member since 2002-11-08)

9

Hi Sri,

I got your point , but the real advantage of MSTR is that this tool works on a data warehouse which is build upon completeply different principals compared with the traditional databases. On that data warehouse you have two levels - logical (facts, metrics, attributes etc) and phisycal ( tables and fields) . And that logical level is a basis for a data modelling , data analysis and etc. You can have a complex logical structure with many sublevels and hierarchies … but at the end you will get a report …

I am using the concept of classes and objects in BO but in MSTR I see much more adtract and complex notions…

Are you using MSTR ? Give me a week from now and I can comment for these two tools with much more confidence…

cheers …

Emile

Emile (BOB member since 2003-06-06)

10

Well all these Jargons are different way of calling things… MSTR have different name and BO or Cognos calls it differently… The bottomline they all sit on top of DW built with any modelling technique…

Yes I have… Take your own time and would definitely be interested in your views :yesnod: …

Sridharan :india: (BOB member since 2002-11-08)

11

I’ve installed each of these products and have written a series of articles for Intelligent Enterprise that compares them:

As well, TDWI has a class that gets into some of these differences.

Regards,
Cindi

cindihowson (BOB member since 2002-08-30)

12

Emile:

I wouldn’t write off the OLAP Report so easily. It is one of few truly independent analyses of the BI markeplace. It’s author, Nigel Pendse, does not accept payment or vendor input in the analysis. All of the data is provided by cutomers that are actually using the tools included in the survey. Given the global scope of his sample and it’s size, it’s a very reliable source.

DWWIZARD

DWWIZARD (BOB member since 2003-04-17)