We performed a comparison between Databricks and IBM Cognos based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about Databricks, Microsoft, Alteryx and others in Data Science Platforms."The most valuable aspect of the solution is its notebook. It's quite convenient to use, both terms of the research and the development and also the final deployment, I can just declare the spark jobs by the load tables. It's quite convenient."
"I work in the data science field and I found Databricks to be very useful."
"The technical support is good."
"We are completely satisfied with the ease of connecting to different sources of data or pocket files in the search"
"This solution offers a lake house data concept that we have found exciting. We are able to have a large amount of data in a data lake and can manage all relational activities."
"The fast data loading process and data storage capabilities are great."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to use SQL directly with Databricks."
"Databricks is a scalable solution. It is the largest advantage of the solution."
"Dashboarding, reporting, and ad hoc reporting are the valuable features of IBM Cognos."
"The dashboarding offered by this solution is very valuable to us."
"Integration with Office can enable the 'download' mode of storytelling."
"The most valuable features of IBM Cognos are governance and enterprise reporting."
"IBM Cognos offers tools so that you can design and develop your own test queries and reporting solutions."
"Previously, we were doing static reporting. Management would request a report, and it would take staff a week or more to provide it. With Cognos, we have dynamic reporting, and it has reduced both reporting and decision making times significantly. With the solution's dashboard, the company's management team has updated records at their fingertips. This means that they can directly access the data they need to make decisions."
"The most valuable features are Report Development (Functionality) and Information Distribution (Flexibility)."
"The basic platform comes with several meta-modelling tools."
"It would be nice to have more guidance on integrations with ETLs and other data quality tools."
"It's not easy to use, and they need a better UI."
"The solution has some scalability and integration limitations when consolidating legacy systems."
"Databricks has added some alerts and query functionality into their SQL persona, but the whole SQL persona, which is like a role, needs a lot of development. The alerts are not very flexible, and the query interface itself is not as polished as the notebook interface that is used through the data science and machine learning persona. It is clunky at present."
"I have seen better user interfaces, so that is something that can be improved."
"The data visualization for this solution could be improved. They have started to roll out a data visualization tool inside Databricks but it is in the early stages. It's not comparable to a solution like Power BI, Luca, or Tableau."
"We'd like a more visual dashboard for analysis It needs better UI."
"Databricks can improve by making the documentation better."
"I think the GIS pieces maybe not as good as we would like."
"It would be better if it is was easier to implement without extensive training for it."
"I don't like that when we use Colab packages, we get less functionality. For example, you can make groups of data with Excel or with the data sets from the packages, but when you use the Colab packages directly, you can only group the data when you analyze it with Analysis Studio. I think Cognos needs to improve more on this functionality."
"Extending features on dashboards so it becomes a real dashboard building application, not only a data exploration tool."
"There are some small features that are missing. It would be nice if the graphics were better. You can use external sources for charts, but it's quite complex to use and not easy to implement. If you want a new chart, you can download it from multiple tools and implement it into IBM Cognos."
"It would be good if the solution had conditional formatting."
"I would like them to reinclude PowerPlay. One thing that I am missing in the current Cognos is what was formally named PowerPlay. They have basically removed PowerPlay from it, which is something that I fail to understand because it was the most wonderful tool for business intelligence that I've ever used. As far as I know, they don't provide this functionality anymore, so this is one thing that I dislike about Cognos."
"There are many problems with the product's stability part, making it an area where improvements are required."
Databricks is ranked 1st in Data Science Platforms with 78 reviews while IBM Cognos is ranked 7th in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools with 132 reviews. Databricks is rated 8.2, while IBM Cognos is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of Databricks writes "A nice interface with good features for turning off clusters to save on computing". On the other hand, the top reviewer of IBM Cognos writes "Improved the quality of our KPIs, while reducing calls to the IT department". Databricks is most compared with Amazon SageMaker, Informatica PowerCenter, Dataiku Data Science Studio, Microsoft Azure Machine Learning Studio and Dremio, whereas IBM Cognos is most compared with Microsoft Power BI, Oracle OBIEE, Tableau, SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform and Oracle Hyperion.
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