Oracle Essbase vs Quest Foglight for Databases comparison

Oracle and Quest Software are both solutions in the Database Development and Management category. Oracle is ranked #11 with an average rating of 8.6, while Quest Software is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.2. Oracle holds a 0.9% mindshare in DDM, compared to Quest Software’s 8.0% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Oracle users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 93% of Quest Software users who would recommend it.

Oracle Essbase

Read 14 Oracle Essbase reviews

136 Views
91 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Quest Foglight for Databases

Read 14 Quest Foglight for Databases reviews

1,902 Views
700 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

Oracle Essbase

Quest Foglight for Databases

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 23, 2025

Oracle Essbase and Quest Foglight for Databases are competing products in the fields of database management and monitoring. While Oracle Essbase is preferred for its multidimensional database management, Quest Foglight stands out for its advanced performance monitoring, especially in diverse environments.

Features: Oracle Essbase provides advanced multidimensional data management, predictive analytics, and financial reporting capabilities ideal for scalable analytic solutions. Quest Foglight for Databases offers outstanding database monitoring, diagnostic capabilities, and real-time performance insights, which are highly valuable for optimizing database operations.

Room for Improvement: Oracle Essbase could benefit from simplifying its complex deployment process and enhancing its ease of use. Its customer service process could also be enhanced for better user satisfaction. Quest Foglight for Databases could improve its user interface and provide more customization options for dashboards. It could also expand its monitoring capabilities to include more database platforms and enhance documentation for ease of use.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Oracle Essbase involves a complex deployment process, though it offers robust support options, often considered challenging by users. Quest Foglight for Databases features a more straightforward deployment process and is praised for its responsive and effective customer support, providing a smoother overall experience.

Pricing and ROI: Oracle Essbase involves significant setup costs due to its comprehensive features, often leading to high ROI when its full capabilities are leveraged. Quest Foglight for Databases presents a more cost-effective solution with a quicker ROI, particularly benefiting environments prioritizing database monitoring and performance.

To learn more, read our detailed Oracle Essbase vs. Quest Foglight for Databases Report (Updated: June 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Oracle Essbase vs. Quest Foglight for Databases

June 2025

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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

Ranking in Database Development and Management

11th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

5.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Quest Foglight for Databases

Ranking in Database Development and Management

2nd

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Database Development and Management category, the mindshare of Oracle Essbase is 0.9%, down from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Quest Foglight for Databases is 8.0%, up from 7.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Database Development and Management

Featured Reviews

Pratik Phapale

Oracle Hyperion Essbase Developer at HCL Technologies

Multidimensional cube structure enables complex data storage and Oracle consistently upgrades Essbase

It's definitely growing and has many great features, especially in the cloud. I haven't used the on-premises server as much. Multidimensional data processing: Essbase is a kind of backbone, or back end, for systems like Hyperion Planning and Hyperion Financial Management. It's a multidimensional cube where we can store and process details, generate reports, and do multiple data processing, which isn't possible in Oracle or other alternatives. So, I'm grateful for this experience. Continuous improvement: Recently, I faced a version upgrade from 11.1.2 to 11.4. Now I'm on 11.2.10. Essbase is continuously upgrading its features in different areas, like configuration, properties, and the cloud platform. It's great to have experience with this, as well as working with the fundamental parts of the VM sets.

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Stuart Dairiki

Senior IT Manager at a wholesaler/distributor with 1,001-5,000 employees

Empowers efficient database monitoring and performance troubleshooting with powerful workload analysis

I find it extremely helpful to use Foglight to triage any database issues, specifically performance issues using what Foglight calls PI investigator. It is a very powerful workload analysis tool that helps me understand where bottlenecks are. It allows me to see performance issues as end users report them. It can save time and effort when doing root cause analysis. It enables me to obtain information quicker and easier compared to manually compiling it. Foglight provides us with a near-real-time activity database. It's not 100% real-time. It has less than a minute latency. It allows us to see performance issues as end-users report them. We started seeing benefits pretty much immediately. We use Foglight to display intensive databases. However, it's not something we monitor regularly. It's only something we kind of dig into as we troubleshoot and triage issues. It does help us determine potential IT help issues. When we use Foglight, we find it helps drill down holistically into potential bottlenecks. It helps us to see what is going on in the database. Foglight allows us to monitor multiple database platforms. We use, for example, Oracle, SQL Server, Postgres, Amazon Redshift, and SAP HANA. It gives us insight into our entire landscape of production workloads in near real-time. The solution saves costs when performing root cause analysis. It can save time and effort when doing root cause analysis. It allows us to obtain information quicker and easier than by manually compiling information.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Essbase is extremely stable and low-maintenance."

"The solution can handle a large volume of data."

"I have found the most valuable aspect is the user-friendly environment and current features."

"Oracle Essbase is a web integration system that integrates with other data systems."

"Unlike relational, where you're linking together multiple tables, with Essbase, you basically define what the dimensions are beforehand, and you define the hierarchy, and then load the data. This allows you to do a pretty sophisticated analysis so that you can drill into it and slice and dice the data."

"The solution is stable and reliable."

"It is highly efficient and easily scalable, particularly for handling large databases."

"It is very fast compared to other normal databases, like SQL and MySQL."

More Oracle Essbase pros

"The PI module allows [my colleague] to identify which new indexes or modified indexes are going to make the biggest impact."

"One of the hardest things to do in database management is to evaluate performance deviation across time. The adaptive baseline that Quest is using is by far the most helpful. That doesn't necessarily mean I use it on a daily basis, but it is something that I have not been able to find in any other tool, at the same level."

"The most valuable feature is the in-depth capability SQL Performance Investigator provides. It allows you to drill down to the smallest detail that occurs on our platform. It does a highly detailed and atomic follow-up of what one wants to look for in relation to time and our different instances."

"The platform is very stable."

"We went from basically 30% coverage of our production environment to 100% coverage."

"What I really like is the SQL PI feature, which allows us to drill down into queries and identify what is causing contention in the database. Using the SQL PI feature, I am able to drill down into the queries, see what is blocking, and try to improve it."

"It can save time and effort when doing root cause analysis. It enables me to obtain information quicker and easier compared to manually compiling it."

"The real-time activity screens are also helpful... if there is something that is running slowly, we can eliminate the database as being an issue and perhaps look at the server, network activity, or something outside of the realm of the database as being the issue."

More Quest Foglight for Databases pros

Cons

"They should improve the solution's performance."

"There is room for improvement in terms of cost-effectiveness."

"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."

"I would like to see an integration with application performance management and a version control management tool."

"The reporting tool of Essbase needs improvement."

"It's an expensive product to use."

"The ability to drive external reporting out for development could be improved."

"The solution could enhance business analytics. I delved into the data using Oracle Essbase to create a new support tool."

More Oracle Essbase cons

"Foglight does have a component that allows you to look at things in real time, but it's not as friendly or as efficient in terms of responsiveness as Quest Spotlight is. Foglight might be lacking in this department."

"I would like the rule development code to be made available so we don't always have to be referred to professional services for custom solutions. For example, if we want to exclude certain databases from a particular rule, we shouldn't have to go to support and to professional services for that solution. If the code and syntax were available, we have resources that could quickly turn something like that around."

"When we decided to go with Foglight, a lot of people stopped using the diagnostics part because it was very intimidating... They still won't use it because they feel it's too intimidating. They will open something up and not know what to do. It's not very user-friendly. You have to click on a lot of stuff to find the information."

"Quest must release a Spanish version. That's critical because not everyone speaks English in Latin America. It's an excellent product, so it's super important that they offer the application and customer service in Spanish."

"It would be amazing if they could enable the "Performance Investigator" functionality across all database platforms."

"The monitoring capabilities for Postgres should be at par with SQL Server. This is the area where we push back on our Quest representative."

"When holding data for two years for 20 SQL Servers, the reporting becomes sluggish and unresponsive."

"The data model needs improvement when it comes to creating custom reports. That is an area where it needs a bit of improvement. Foglight gathers a lot of information around our databases as part of its monitoring. While I know all this information is in there, trying to pull the metric we want out for custom reports is sometimes hard to find. One nice thing about Foglight is that you can create custom dashboards, which you can easily convert to reports. We would be doing a lot more of that if it weren't for the challenging data model."

More Quest Foglight for Databases cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Essbase is competitively priced."

"The solution is expensive."

"It is a costly solution."

"I believe the licensing is on a monthly base."

"The price of Foglight could be a little more competitive in Chile, and it should be lowered for long-time customers— at least by 20 percent. Sometimes the price is a limitation. We have seven instances and nearly 5 million users. If Quest Foglight could reduce its prices for the clients that have been with it for a long time, we would be able to have more instances."

"Compared to the other tools on the market, Foglight is okay in terms of pricing and licensing."

"The price is worth it, if you have the time to go through the information."

"This is like the "Cadillac" of performance monitoring software. It's not cheap... I am currently with a company that I was able to convince that the product is worth the cost."

"Pricing is very reasonable. We were able to construct a pretty easy contract with Quest, who were very easy to work with and very amenable to what we are trying to do. It worked out well for us."

"It is cost-effective. With our EA, it is really based on the scale of our database environment. We found the Quest team to be reasonable and flexible when it comes to pricing and scaling of licenses."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

23%

Computer Software Company

10%

Insurance Company

Healthcare Company

Financial Services Firm

14%

Computer Software Company

12%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Oracle Essbase?

If I got the opportunity to work with Hyperion, which is the best product, I would definitely go with that. The main concern is that Oracle is ending on-premises server support, so it would be bett...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Oracle Essbase?

We provide complete ownership of this application to Walmart projects. In the UK system, we support and develop for the Asda account, known as Eltham. We provide installation and support to over 50...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Quest Foglight for Databases?

The pricing is palatable. We've already done one renewal and we are in our second contract. We're happy thus far.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Quest Foglight for Databases?

It would be amazing if they could enable the "Performance Investigator" functionality across all database platforms. I've been talking to their product development team about enhancements that I wo...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Quest Foglight for Databases?

I primarily use the solution for database monitoring, specifically for Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, Postgres, SAP HANA, and AWS Redshift.

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 24% of the time

SAP Analytics Cloud vs Oracle Essbase

Compared 12% of the time

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform vs Oracle Essbase

Compared 11% of the time

IBM Cognos vs Oracle Essbase

Compared 7% of the time

IBM Planning Analytics vs Oracle Essbase

Compared 7% of the time

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Quest Spotlight vs Quest Foglight for Databases

Compared 37% of the time

SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer vs Quest Foglight for Databases

Compared 27% of the time

Redgate SQL Toolbelt Essentials vs Quest Foglight for Databases

Compared 8% of the time

SQL Sentry vs Quest Foglight for Databases

Compared 8% of the time

Oracle Enterprise Manager vs Quest Foglight for Databases

Compared 7% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Oracle Essbase

June 2025

Download Oracle Essbase product report

Buyer's Guide

Quest Foglight for Databases

June 2025

Download Quest Foglight for Databases product report

Also Known As

Essbase

No data available

Overview

Oracle Essbase is an OLAP (Online Analytical Processing) Server that provides an environment for deploying pre-packaged applications or developing custom analytic and enterprise performance management applications.

Oracle

Foglight identifies and resolves performance issues across your applications, databases and virtual environments. The Foglight family of products easily integrates with your existing tools, so you can monitor and analyze data from almost any source across your infrastructure and view it through a single interface with our customizable, unified monitoring platform

Quest Software

Sample Customers

CHU de Rennes, Bellco Credit Union, Akindo Sushiro Co. Ltd, Deutsche Telekom AG, Samarco MineraÊo 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.

CommitDBA

Buyer's Guide

Oracle Essbase vs. Quest Foglight for Databases

June 2025

Free Report: Oracle Essbase vs. Quest Foglight for Databases

Find out what your peers are saying about Oracle Essbase vs. Quest Foglight for Databases and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.

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