Business Objects Vs Cognos

general discussion
1

Hello Folks,

Any chance anyone has a side by side comparison between Cognos and Business Objects ?

Basically the pros and cons of each of the tools ? I am seeing a few online but are more generic than a side by side comparison…

My current employer has Cognos 10.2 and I have been asked to do a comparison with any other tools, and I picked up Business Objects for the comparison

Cognos interface seems to be a little (no offence) dull to me.
I have used web intellgence a lot , I know its not an ace tool but the interface is more intitive and looks better and is easy to use.

One disadvantage I know for sure with web intelligence is the drill down capability, its not that good…I have seen that when it tries to go over a bex query it has a tuff time (though this was some 3 or 4 years back ,do not know the current state)

how is it with Micrsoft OLAP cubes ? I mean if I were to try and report ontop of an OLAP cube built in SSAS (SQL Server Analysis services) , how well does that work and the performance and so on ?

Most of the reporting that I have done in web intelligence is on top of a OLTP or OLAP (not cubes) and have liked webi

Thanks for your help !

iinquisitivee (BOB member since 2015-03-07)

2

Can’t give any direct comments myself, although I have a friend who has worked with Cognos 15 years+.
He has now being developing BO for around 4 years, he reckons BO is far superior at most things.

Please note that if its broke (think data model) no new reporting tool will “fix” it.

Again, the data construct matters a lot here. often people use sight of what an OLAP cube actually is and start trying to include all DW dimensions in the cube :roll_eyes: .
I do undertsand that BW integration has improved radically over the last few releases (some would say it had to).
However, I have not used it since the same period as yourself.

You also need to consider specialist (contract) resource, is this as available for Cognos as easy as for Business Objects and vice versa?

Mak 1 :uk: (BOB member since 2005-01-06)

3

Thanks Mak for the reply.

Personally I would love BOBJ to be implemented -:slight_smile: But at the same time would like to ensure that I have the proper analysis done before that

Also am going to try and install the Edge series (using the free trial) so the users can try it hands on.

Anybody else ? any documents ? any thoughts ?

Thanks for your help !!

iinquisitivee (BOB member since 2015-03-07)

4

I think I might get that printed on a T shirt… :mrsbob:

Debbie

Debbie :uk: (BOB member since 2005-03-01)

5

Mak,
Any chance your friend might have anything noted down which he might be able to share based on his experience ?
Again personally I like BOBJ but am not much of a Cognos Expert to do a very detailed comparison…

If he is able to share something that would be great !!

thanks again for all your valuable replies !!

iinquisitivee (BOB member since 2015-03-07)

6

See this topic: Comparing BO with other tools

MichaelWelter :vatican_city: (BOB member since 2002-08-08)

7

Forgot about that one Michael.

If you can get the attention of Mark P on here, I know he has done a fair amount of work with both.
However, I’m sure on the post Michael has linked to you will find plenty.

Mak 1 :uk: (BOB member since 2005-01-06)

8

Thanks Mak, will see if I have a way to message Mark.

Michael, Thanks for the links, will go through those, check some of them for BO and Cognos and they seemed to be dated long back, will go through more.

iinquisitivee (BOB member since 2015-03-07)

9

As if by magic… :smiley:

Personally I prefer Business Objects but there are bits of Cognos that I like better.

Tool by tool, you’ve got the same basic three piece set up - admin tool, semantic layer tool and reporting tool. Please note that I’m comparing Cognos 10 to BOXI3.1 as they’re the ones that I’ve had most recent experience with (I’ve not used IDT yet but have used BO4.1 Webi a fair bit)

Webi v Report Studio

Webi is far more intuitive for a complete novice with a half day session to get going on. Both will take a long time to master but Webi easier to get the basics up and running on. The hardest part to get your head round in my opinion on Webi is the calculation contexts. However, this is fairly advanced and wouldn’t stop a user creating reasonable reports with breaks, sections, totals, charts, etc.

On Report Studio, selecting what you want can be painful, i.e. selecting the table cell versus the column, versus the table, etc. The query interface isn’t as logical either, especially when you’re looking at prompts, queries within queries, etc.

Designer v Framework Manager

Both simple enough to use but Cognos can be painful from the point of view of having to validate everything you do before moving on to the next bit. After working on many models, you’re confident about what you’re developing but still have to validate, validate, validate. The big plus on Cognos over BO on this is that you can publish several packages from one model. In BO terms, that’s like having one universe and being able to publish different sets of classes as sub-universes. If you have a corporate data warehouse, you could just wire it all in and publish different parts to different packages and manage security. On the flip side of that, contexts make Designer a much more powerful tool to use from the point of view of understanding what your queries will become when you drag objects into a query panel. You can even use the in-built query panel to see what is generated. Aggregate awareness is another massive advantage, as is the ability to annotate the canvas.

Admin tools - all pretty similar. I’ve not done extensive work on Cognos security models but there’s only so many ways you can go with it. Neither are perfect but both do the job well enough as far as I can tell.

One of the biggest differences for me though isn’t controlled by SAP or IBM. It’s the end-user peer support. I’m not just saying it because I’m posting here but BOB is far better than Cognoise for getting an answer. If you don’t like the answer that you’re given, that’s up to you, but it’s probably the correct one! If you look how long a lot of the people on here have been posting, many have been around for over a decade and have the enthusiasm for the product, despite the occasionally hiccups (Polestar anyone?), to keep coming back and promoting BO through helping others.

10

Surprised it took you so long :wave: .

This translates to Business Layers in the IDT, great concept poorly implemented by BO, IMO.
Agreed, amount of direct or indirect product support is key, unless I’m working on your site :rotf:.

Mak 1 :uk: (BOB member since 2005-01-06)

11

Let’s put it this way, I’d rather log on to BOB than raise a ticket with SAP!

12

hmmm…for some reason I strongly agree with you Sire !! 8) 8) 8)

Also, interestingly to see notes I have to be a paid customer (as mentioned by Mark on another thread) …though I must say that the notes in itself are not very easy to read… :wink: :wink: I downloaded Edge as they have free trial…but guess what for virtualization (vm ware) there are some notes available that I have to go through…but the notes are not available for free trial customers -:wink:

Thanks for the review you provided above…see personally I too like BO, but I was not sure if that is just me as I have worked much more on BO than Cognos… :slight_smile: But looks like I am seeing many say that webi is more intuitive…

I looked at Cognos and I was not very impressed…then I thought nay…maybe I am just not looking at it with an open mind :roll_eyes: (atleast the reporting piece), I have not yet looked at framework manager…

Once again…thanks for the feed back.

iinquisitivee (BOB member since 2015-03-07)