We performed a comparison between IBM Cognos, Microsoft Power BI, and SQL Server based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Tableau, Oracle and others in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools."We are able to generate quality reports easily which allows us to decrease response time."
"The most valuable feature is developing reports from different data sources, making it a reliable data source."
"We use the account statement report. When you use an account in HSBC, you receive various types of accounts, such as the stock market, fixed accounts, credit cards, and business accounts. We can create one consolidated report called CCS support, which includes all these accounts. In that statement, we are consolidating all those accounts."
"The most valuable feature of IBM Cognos is security. The solution has updated features that other competitors' solutions come out with long after IBM Cognos has had them."
"Self-service is possible through the use of dashboards, which are also very intuitive. Stories can be used to pin snapshots, tell the story for meetings, etc."
"The solution's initial setup process is easy."
"The Report Studio that is aimed at professional report writers."
"A drag-and-drop interface for selecting creating ad hoc reports makes this product very easy to use."
"PowerBi is used to import our production data and generate dashboards, then integrates other Excel sheets to provide managers dashboards. This helps them get insights to make better OEE improvement decisions, mainly where to focus resources. We became able to see indicators from any time frame (day, week, month, or year), then could make better decisions."
"The solution is stable with reasonable performance."
"The most valuable features of Microsoft BI are its intuitiveness and ease to use."
"I like having the ability to connect Excel files as data inputs."
"There is a feature in Microsoft BI that allows JSON data to SQL on the dashboards effectively and quickly."
"We found the initial setup to be straightforward."
"If you are not very technical this tool could be very useful."
"We have a lot of servers and applications from which we want reports, and it allows us to create reports from an SQL source or some other source."
"The solution seems to be pretty flexible."
"The ease of administration, in general, is the solution's most valuable aspect."
"The most valuable feature is easy installation. It was very easy to install."
"SQL Server is a highly stable solution."
"I use it to fine tune my procedures and functions."
"SQL Server is essentially the backbone of every microservice. From a developer's perspective, it is the backbone of all microservices. The tool enables data retrieval, set data, and essential operations, ensuring the smooth functioning of applications. In essence, it is the integral part that keeps applications operational."
"The ability to see tables, reviews, and custom script options is good."
"SQL Server scales well."
"Tableau and Power BI are faster than Cognos."
"Most of our company's customers want to be able to deploy IBM Cognos on a web application and use it as a desktop application, which is not possible currently."
"Cognos is quite slow - it's missing the performance of the PowerPlay cubes."
"There are a lot of limitations with the out-of-the-box tool."
"Compared to Tableau and PowerBI, the IBM interface is easier to use. However, the drag-and-drop functionality isn't as straightforward. Formatting is also more challenging in the cloud than in other applications, like Power BI. Also, if you encounter an issue, it takes more time to resolve it on the formatting side."
"Extending dynamic cubes aggregate awareness with calculated measures."
"I would like to see is more easy building, movement in the reports, and dashboard functionality within reporting. Overall more simple elements within reports. If the elements are simple then you don't have to render a full page, but you can move separate parts in the page."
"The data uploads that we do, such as Excel files, have a lot of restrictions. If we can make it a bit more user-friendly, allowing us to have more flexibility it would be a great help."
"I would like to see some AI incorporated into this solution in the future."
"The one thing that I noticed specifically was the graphical features, and some of the analytical features. They were stronger on the Tableau side."
"It is definitely a wonderful analytics tool. However, database ETL, data integration functionality would be absolutely perfect in many cases. Currently, it doesn't get the job done and we need to extract, transform, and load the data from faulty data sets into something more suitable for the deployment of the analytics tool."
"The solution's documentation needs improvement."
"We haven't used it that long and I haven't come across anything that's stood out as needing to be fixed."
"I would prefer that the solution not be shared. I'm concerned that if we make a mistake we could reveal information to people who shouldn't see it. I would like to have my own on-prem server, to buy my own server and have my own infrastructure for Microsoft BI, with only with my data."
"Microsoft BI can improve some of the visual level filters or visual functionality, that are available in other BI tools, such as Tableau or Qlik Sense."
"One thing I would like to have is the scripting language, as they already have within Excel. It's already within a Microsoft business product, because Excel is the number one business product out there. So it would be nice to have the scripting capability in order to automate certain processes."
"The scalability and the high availability feature can be expanded or improved. Currently, there is a limitation on scalability. A feature similar to the Oracle Diagnostic feature can be included to provide a better user experience."
"There is room for improvement in performance when managing a large quality of data and a high number of active users."
"The interface of the tool has certain shortcomings, making it an area where improvements are required."
"As SQL server could not support the number of connections we desired, we were forced to go with Oracle."
"I want to see one improvement and this involves the replication between the DC and DR."
"When transferring data from the SQL Server to Excel, the data types are not copied correctly. This issue might be associated with the formatting of the data types."
"The solution could improve by having better integration."
"We need it to support Linux for better troubleshooting flexibility."