We performed a comparison between IBM Cognos, SQL Server, and Tableau based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Tableau, Oracle and others in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools.
"Report Studio: This is the most powerful and sophisticated tool for professional reporting."
"Dashboarding, reporting, and ad hoc reporting are the valuable features of IBM Cognos."
"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."
"It is a stable product."
"IBM Cognos improves the effectiveness of the sales team."
"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."
"The initial setup is very straightforward."
"The solution's initial setup process is easy."
"It is a very user-friendly solution. It is easy to manage the databases and troubleshoot any issue. It is a perfect solution for the volume or transactions that we need to manage."
"The installation is really easy."
"We like business integration, database, and analysis."
"The SQL Server is low maintenance, it does not require advanced technical skills to maintain or use it as you might in other similar database solutions. You need some knowledge on how to access the solution and how to query it but it is fairly straightforward."
"I think just having everything in one centralized set of databases where there is easily managed manageable."
"It is stable, and it works okay."
"SQL Server's performance is fine."
"If we want to expand to other servers and create an extra node, it's expandable."
"The solution has a lot of customization when comparing to Microsoft BI."
"The most valuable features are the visualizations, the way they show the combination charts."
"The most valuable features of the solution are the permission management and the user management."
"The use of a storyboard helps the flow of the data visualisation."
"Tableau Prep tool for data preparation is a most valuable tool."
"Its visualizations are good, and its features make the development process a little less time-consuming. It has an in-memory extract feature that allows us to extract data and keep it on the server, and then our users can use it quickly."
"The geospatial maps representation and the visualizations are nice."
"The stability seems to be very reliable."
"IBM Support can be slow at times, but they can usually deliver in a timely manner."
"Chart quality: many other competitors have charts and graphics that look much better and that provide dynamic effects. Cognos doesn't."
"We need more predictive analytical functions, not only diagnostic or decryptic analytics."
"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."
"The technical support team’s response time is slow and needs to be improved."
"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."
"This product could use improvement in terms of usability for those with less technical know how."
"I would like to have predictive and forecasting capabilities in Cognos. It's one thing to do reporting, and another thing to easily predict or forecast certain data points, which is very important for all the clients."
"I would like to see better integration between their link server and other platforms, such as IBM."
"SQL Server could be improved with cheaper licensing because it's very expensive."
"Its security can be improved. When you look at the Windows environment, it isn't the most secure environment. It is exposed to so many attacks. They continuously need to improve the security of the platform on which it sits."
"Only one CPU core can be used. Can’t move a database between servers easily. Can’t use triggers."
"If this solution could provide an automatic indexing feature it would be very useful."
"One thing I don't like about SQL Server is the way they've set up security with users and groups. It just doesn't seem that intuitive to me. Adding some more explanatory information might help some."
"SQL Server could improve by providing something similar to an interface or dashboard where a developer can do debugging, this would make a developer's work easier. Additionally, the optimization could be better. If there was an interface showing information needed for the optimization it would help because there can be some data loss making it difficult to optimize the SQL Server."
"SQL Server could be more robust than one of its competitors."
"The SQL programming functionality needs to be improved."
"The performance could be better."
"Improvements in schema security and row/column security need to be made."
"With Tableau, there is a gap in its ability to handle very large-scale data."
"Most of the problems in Tableau Online that I have noticed have to do with performance or weird, inexplicable bugs that I can't pin down. For example, you might try unloading some data, and you'll be waiting for a long time without anything happening."
"The data entered into Tableau must be clean. Otherwise, it won't work properly."
"The pricing is a bit expensive."
"To be the best in the market, Tableau has to improve its user interface and also look into developing implementing the best machine learning algorithms."
