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Oracle Essbase 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

Oracle Essbase
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
4.6
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
Database Development and Management (12th)
Oracle OBIEE
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
158
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (10th), Reporting (9th)
 

Mindshare comparison

Oracle Essbase and Oracle OBIEE aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Oracle Essbase is designed for Database Development and Management and holds a mindshare of 0.9%, down 1.2% compared to last year.
Oracle OBIEE, on the other hand, focuses on BI (Business Intelligence) Tools, holds 2.0% mindshare, down 3.7% since last year.
Database Development and Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Oracle Essbase0.9%
SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer5.7%
Redgate SQL Toolbelt Essentials5.6%
Other87.8%
Database Development and Management
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Oracle OBIEE2.0%
Microsoft Power BI12.7%
Tableau Enterprise9.2%
Other76.1%
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Bhavya N - PeerSpot reviewer
Ensuring efficient data analysis and reporting while identifying areas for calculation and export improvements
The features of Oracle Essbase are valuable, such as its multi-dimensional database used for dynamic calculations and reporting purposes. These features are valuable because they support multi-dimensional data views, allowing users to analyze relationships across various data categories and establish a comprehensive perspective on business operations. Moreover, dynamic calculations allow real-time data analysis, significantly improving the accuracy and depth of financial insights. I have utilized Essbase's data aggregation capabilities. The Oracle Essbase interface provides a good user experience, allowing users to easily navigate and analyze data with fast query performance, effective data visualization tools such as charts, graphs, and tables, and flexibility for customizable analysis and reporting, including the ability to create ad hoc reports. The benefits of the interface include improving productivity and enhancing decision-making.
reviewer2701689 - PeerSpot reviewer
Facing a complex learning curve challenges, automation capabilities provide some clerical work savings
Oracle OBIEE has a steep learning curve compared to tools like SQL Server or Power BI. In situations where complex problem-solving is required, Oracle's support tends to direct users to sales representatives with limited technical knowledge, which is less than ideal. Additionally, the solution is more expensive than using Microsoft's reporting tools.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Oracle's capability to define custom hierarchies and dimensions has helped my organization in performing nuanced data exploration and advanced modeling because we use Oracle Essbase for dimension definition and also to define the properties of these members, such as dynamic members, stored members, shared members."
"Essbase is a kind of backbone, or back end, for systems like Hyperion Planning."
"It helps us fetch specific data sets per users' requirements."
"Oracle Essbase is a web integration system that integrates with other data systems."
"The solution can handle a large volume of data."
"It is highly efficient and easily scalable, particularly for handling large databases."
"Oracle Essbase enables organizations to take their strategic decisions, which helps them make the right decisions at the right time."
"The Oracle Essbase interface provides a good user experience, allowing users to easily navigate and analyze data with fast query performance, effective data visualization tools such as charts, graphs, and tables, and flexibility for customizable analysis and reporting, including the ability to create ad hoc reports."
"The solution is easy to use and very flexible."
"It is easy to use...I rate the scalability of the solution a nine out of ten."
"I like the architecture of this solution. RPV is a powerful feature in Oracle OBIEE. It lets us design as per the needs of the organization. I can have multiple presentation folders and presentation layers. I can have customization in a single node in VMware, which is a very good feature of Oracle OBIEE. It helps customers in designing as per their requirements."
"There are a lot of functions in the product, including a drill-down functionality and level-based hierarchies that are very attractive."
"Easy to create ad hoc reporting for different solutions."
"Its robustness is most valuable. It can handle massive amounts of data quickly. If it's properly configured and tuned, it can handle massive amounts of data very quickly to produce results. That to me is the number one feature."
"Dashboards provide us with various views and perspectives on our data, allowing us to analyze metrics such as revenue, occupancy rates, etc."
"It can be used with any type of data models, such as relational lines and dimensional lines."
 

Cons

"There is room for improvement in terms of cost-effectiveness."
"It's an expensive product to use."
"They should improve the solution's performance."
"The main concern is that Oracle is ending on-premises server support, so it would be better if there was a cloud platform available for Oracle Essbase."
"Essbase has a programming language, and it has a couple of functions to do forecasting, however, their feature set for that is not that good."
"The ability to drive external reporting out for development could be improved."
"A significant area for improvement in Oracle Essbase is that financial statement analysis, CAPEX and OPEX analysis, and financial consolidation must be done manually, as Oracle Essbase doesn't include the financial consolidation module that is available in EPM."
"The reporting tool of Essbase needs improvement."
"I find I prefer Oracle OAC over OBIEE. It's more advanced, has artificial intelligence, and there's more that we can do with it in general. OBIEE is lacking features."
"There should be more integration in the solution. For example, there should be one solution with multiple functionalities so that other solutions are not needed. Having one solution with all the needed functionality would be helpful."
"Oracle OBIEE could improve by having better integration and compatibility with other vendors."
"When a large number of queries are running at the same time, the report fails."
"Oracle products have a lot of complications...Oracle has a history of not really providing great support."
"If the data is large, the dashboard takes a really long time. So, based on the database, if you have around a million cost contacts, the load time is very low, and the dashboard fails."
"One of the things that have been difficult with OBIEE during all the time that I've known it is that when something goes wrong, many times, the error messages are not specific, and you've got to spend a lot of time digging and digging and digging before you say, "Oh, okay. I figured out what it was." There should be more detailed error messages or troubleshooting messages."
"Even though we have a feature to enable the physical query to be seen in the log, in case of any issues, it is challenging to debug and see or identify where is the issue. For example, we designed the OBIEE repository and deployed it into the server, and we are now accessing and creating a report. For some reason, if the report is not working as expected, it is very difficult to identify the issue. We have a feature to see the physical query that is being generated in the central OBIEE server. I feel that this feature should have been available at the repository level so that while designing the repository, we can select the presentation columns and the query it is going to create. This will avoid the additional task of deploying a feature into the server and then testing the report. It will also make the implementation process friendly if, while designing the repository, we can see: How is a feature working? Are any of the presentation columns selected? How is the query being generated? Which query is being generated? Are any joints used? What kind of joints are used? Having this kind of information will make Oracle OBIEE more powerful and developer-friendly."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Essbase is competitively priced."
"I believe the licensing is on a monthly base."
"It is a costly solution."
"The solution is expensive."
"Its licensing is yearly."
"Power BI is less expensive than Oracle OBIEE. A benefit to Power BI is having the option to work with concurrent licensing."
"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."
"I think to spread this across an enterprise will be a significant investment."
"Simplifying the data integration process would save our clients considerable costs."
"This is a very costly product."
"In our organization, we use a user-based license for Oracle OBIEE, and I've heard that the license cost is based on the number of users."
"The cost of this solution is a little bit high compared with other products like Zoho, so reducing it would make OBIEE more competitive."
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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
21%
Computer Software Company
9%
Insurance Company
9%
Healthcare Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Government
11%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise14
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business40
Midsize Enterprise34
Large Enterprise102
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Oracle Essbase?
It's not that expensive, but also not cheap. I'm not sure because it's a private license.
What needs improvement with Oracle Essbase?
A significant area for improvement in Oracle Essbase is that financial statement analysis, CAPEX and OPEX analysis, and financial consolidation must be done manually, as Oracle Essbase doesn't incl...
What is your primary use case for Oracle Essbase?
The initial setup of Oracle Essbase is dependent on whether you select BSO or ASO cubes. First, you need to set up the type of information and once the type of cubes is defined, you need to define ...
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.
 

Also Known As

Essbase
OBIEE, Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition, Oracle BI, Oracle BI EE 11g
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

CHU de Rennes, Bellco Credit Union, Akindo Sushiro Co. Ltd, Deutsche Telekom AG, Samarco MineraÊo S.A., PCCW Ltd., QDQ media S.A.U., Boiron Italia, Specialized Bicycle Components Inc., Akindo Sushiro Co. Ltd., Air Canada, Daelim Industrial Co. Ltd.
Banca Transilvania, BeckmanCoulter, Hong Kong Housing Society, HealthShare, Ivanhoe Cambridge Unifies, and Home Credit, and Finance Bank.
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