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Looker vs Oracle OBIEE comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Looker
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
Embedded BI (6th)
Oracle OBIEE
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
158
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (6th), Reporting (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Business Intelligence solutions, they serve different purposes. Looker is designed for Embedded BI and holds a mindshare of 8.2%, down 11.3% compared to last year.
Oracle OBIEE, on the other hand, focuses on BI (Business Intelligence) Tools, holds 2.5% mindshare, down 3.9% since last year.
Embedded BI Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Looker8.2%
Tableau Enterprise27.4%
Qlik Sense12.0%
Other52.400000000000006%
Embedded BI
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Oracle OBIEE2.5%
Microsoft Power BI14.5%
Tableau Enterprise11.0%
Other72.0%
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Kishore Jhunjhunwala - PeerSpot reviewer
A cloud solution for operational reporting but is expensive
Some basic feature that is available in other reporting tools is missing. Looker has the ability to show more than 5,000 rows for operational reporting. Some reporting tools allow users to scroll down to see more than 5,000 rows, but in Looker, you have to download the entire dataset. Looker should consider adding a scroll-down option to allow users to view large datasets on screen without downloading them. Looker has some options for granting users access as viewers. However, viewers cannot download the entire dataset. Only superusers can download the whole dataset on the Explore screen. This is a big limitation, as you cannot give any user viewer access. You can give access to superuser access, which is a cost to the company.
Ashok Bhadra - PeerSpot reviewer
Though comprehensive, it is expensive
The solution's most valuable feature is that it is a very comprehensive tool. Oracle OBIEE is a really robust tool for a very large enterprise implementation. Its features in terms of physical data model to logical data model building are all really robust. Though somebody else had developed the tool for the client for whom I used the tool, it was very well done. The data modeling was very well done, and it depends on the person who is executing it, as I hadn't developed it. I had just enhanced it. I had seen whatever my role was, but somebody had initially developed it. It was developed very well. It has a fantastic feature of documenting. When you work with many clients, you see the documentation is always missing, and you end up taking up some other vendor's job. It is usually very hard to figure out technically what was done, what was not done, and where the data is, so the data dictionaries are not up to date, and information documentation is always very poor. Oracle OBIEE has a built-in feature where you can actually create entire documentation of all the data elements and how they are linked, and it throws out HTML documents that are all interlinked, so if you have an entire directory structure, it helps create the document. You can find out which logical model links to which physical table, and it is very easy to identify. There are multiple combinations if you want to identify one particular table and how many models are involved. You just need to click a hyperlink click, and it gives you all the information. If somebody has made any enhancements, you can just regenerate the document as there is a component of the tool that generates the documentation automatically, which is brilliant, I think.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The stability of Looker has been good since I have been using it. However, it depends on what components are being used."
"We can centralize all our data models."
"With Looker, I have experienced benefits in terms of usability and shareability."
"The product is easy to use."
"I would rate the stability a ten out of ten. I didn't face any issues with stability."
"Looker allows you to generate the most optimal SQL queries in a DC through UI actions. We had signed a contract with Google Cloud to use BigQuery. That was the primary reason we adopted Looker. It works better with BigQuery than any other BI platform. We also like how this tool was developed. It was designed with an eye toward microservices architecture."
"From a developer's perspective, the way the functionality's being handled is great."
"It is a pretty stable solution because it is a cloud-based product."
"Oracle OBIEE is good for data visualization and analytical reporting."
"The visualization is very good."
"It's easy to use for business analysts."
"It's the connectors, the adapters. Built in connectors with different ERPs, you can plug in XL, other sources of data. It's very easy to configure. It's very easy to use."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to run it in Exalytics within memory coupled to a Repository on Exadata is where it flies. So it's not meant for mom and pop shops, but if you are a global 500 fortune 1000 company, this is a tool that can get you what you need on time and even in real time."
"They are introducing AI. There are good forecasting features and machine learning."
"It provides excellent stability."
"Provides good data visualization features, and provides a lot of visualization reports from various data sources."
 

Cons

"The main area of concern in Looker is probably related to blending the data from the different sources, including the data present internally in the company and on the cloud."
"The integration with different databases must be improved."
"Stability needs improvement."
"Looker doesn't connect to Excel, which is a huge disappointment because a lot of data is presented in Excel. Also, it can't consume data directly from REST APIs, which is necessary. Looker needs to expand its horizons when it comes to data sources. The inability to connect to different data sources is hampering our use cases. Currently, it only has an ODBC connection that connects to a database. It needs to connect to other data sources, such as Excel, APIs, and different platforms."
"It needs to be more user-friendly."
"The product does not have documented material."
"Integrations with other BI tools could be better."
"The visualization capability of the product is limited."
"Setup and migration are very complex. Technically, Oracle accessory is extremely complex. These days, the industry demands a kind of Excel analysis, which is very easy to install, set up, and it's very developer-friendly as well as end-user friendly. OBIEE lacks all those features."
"The drawback with the tool is that though it is well-created, its users are under-trained to use it."
"They should develop greater visualization because their visualization isn't industry leading at the moment. The way you pull the data and see the data compared to other platforms, they're lagging a little bit behind. Also, their cost. I've got Oracle account managers trying to persuade me every day to purchase these licenses. Once you purchase OBIEE, then you have to purchase the virtualization and then you have to purchase the mobile license to operate on the mobile. It's really expensive."
"The complexity of this product means that you need to have a technical team to develop the reports, although this is also true for products like Microsoft BI and Zoho."
"We needed some technical expertise during setup."
"It takes a lot of maintenance to support the architecture, which is something that should be improved."
"Implementation is cumbersome and requires expertise."
"Oracle OBIEE could improve by having better integration and compatibility with other vendors."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of Looker usually depends on the solution's provider, but it is usually cheaper than the other products in the market. Looker is offered at different prices for different companies."
"Looker is expensive and could be made better by reducing it."
"I do not have to make any payments to use the solution."
"It's not cheap, but it's not expensive for big companies."
"It is cheap."
"If you compare Qlik Sense and Oracle OBIEE licensing, then Oracle products are much better. With Qlik Sense, you have to pay per client and per use. But we get Oracle OBIEE along with the Oracle database, making it much more cost-effective in the long term."
"The price of Oracle OBIEE is expensive, it is difficult for a small business to afford."
"Power BI is less expensive than Oracle OBIEE. A benefit to Power BI is having the option to work with concurrent licensing."
"Oracle products are extremely expensive."
"The pricing we negotiated with Oracle. But, I do not have details."
"It is reasonable, but it depends on how you're going to use it. There are no costs in addition to the standard licensing fees."
"It's expensive."
"The company had twenty-five Oracle OBIEE licenses and never expanded. Price-wise, the solution is expensive."
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Comparison Review

it_user79932 - PeerSpot reviewer
Feb 4, 2015
Comparison of SAP BO, Tableau, QlikView, Cognos, Microsoft, OBIEE and Pentaho
1. SAP BO/BI Enterprise scalability Security Ease of use Semantic layer 2. Tableau Visualization Data discovery Turnaround time 3. IBM Cognos Enterprise scalability Security In-memory feature 4. MS BI - Flexibility 5. Pentaho - Open source but still enterprise grade 6. QlikView Data…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
12%
Retailer
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Government
12%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business40
Midsize Enterprise34
Large Enterprise102
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Looker?
With Looker, I have experienced benefits in terms of usability and shareability.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Looker?
I do not have to make any payments to use the solution. In the beginning, Looker may work fine for its users. If advanced users who have experience with BI tools use Looker, then they may find it t...
What needs improvement with Looker?
The visualization capability of the product is limited. From an improvement perspective, the product should have more visualization capability. I can't clean data in Looker, and if I try to do it, ...
How does Oracle OBIEE compare with Microsoft BI?
Oracle OBIEE is great in allowing design and creativity per the individual needs of the organization. Dashboards are fully customizable and very user-friendly. This solution is very stable. Oracle ...
Which Oracle product is better - OBIEE or Analytics Cloud?
Oracle OBIEE is designed to be relatively easy to set up and has a helpful customer support staff at the ready to assist customers. These are two attributes that make this system quite valuable. OB...
What do you like most about Oracle OBIEE?
The most valuable feature of Oracle OBIEE is its ability to handle large volumes of data and provide traditional BI functionalities that developers can easily understand.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
OBIEE, Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition, Oracle BI, Oracle BI EE 11g
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Yahoo!, Etsy, Kohler, Hipcamp, Hubspot, Kickstarter, Venmo, Dollar Shave Club, 600+ customer
Banca Transilvania, BeckmanCoulter, Hong Kong Housing Society, HealthShare, Ivanhoe Cambridge Unifies, and Home Credit, and Finance Bank.
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