Oracle OBIEE Reviews

We got OBIEE for its dashboard reporting and for getting mining data out. OBIEE was a good fit with the Hyperion products we already had. We love it.

Dashboard reporting could be more dynamic and easier to drill down into.

We have used it for about three years.

It has been pretty stable.

It has been scalable.

We use partners for Oracle, so when we ask for support, we are forwarded to the partner that works with the solution in question. They are really good. If there is an issue where I can just drill down or look into the online forums, I do that as well.

OBIEE is amazing in its integration with Hyperion and dashboard reporting. I would give it a nine out of ten, because there are still changes happening to the platform.

Self service analytics is an amazing feature with OBIEE. Users are empowered to get at the information they need without the need to ask for new views from IT. Through the development of the application, the data is arranged using business terms that those users can understand. 

We have used OBIEE at several clients and the feedback has been fantastic on the dashboards, scorecards, and reporting that we have created. Clients love that OBIEE is a central location to view data from multiple sources in terms that make sense to the business user.

There is some room for improvement on the development side, older versions use a 32-bit administration studio. Some of the controls in this older studio are a little clunky and it can be easy to get lost as a new developer in the various wizards and windows.

4 years

Clustering and Single-Sign on can be difficult.

The initial setup of OBIEE depends on the data sources and their complexity. There is a great community with tons of blogs and the OTN Forums where professionals are willing to share and help out with any setup questions.

The most valuable feature of OBIEE, for me, is the speed with which we can get a solution to the customer. It takes a lot of work upfront on our side, but once that's done, it's a matter of clicking here, there, and we've pretty much got a solution for them.

Users can create their own ad hoc analyses and reports, so that's definitely a big plus. Also, another way its improved our functioning is the speed that it gives us to provide solutions to the customer. That's important to our company so that we can meet contract requirements, particularly ones that are time sensitive.

When we went from version 10 to 11, Oracle changed some of the functionality for us, and ultimately for those few customers that use it. For example, with filters, it was like, "Okay, give me a filter. I want this and I want this." Now it's more like five or six clicks to do the same thing to get to where you're actually defining what the filter is going to do. In my opinion, we lost a little functionality there. We lost some of the streamlining, efficiency, and speed.

We've had some issues with one of the subject areas, in particular, where somehow, somewhere this analysis was built off of this subject area. That subject area got removed. The result was that this analysis still runs properly as it should, but we can't make any changes to it because it says I have an invalid subject area. You can create a new one with the same name, but the internal workings of OBIEE, it knows that it didn't come from here. I've asked several of the experts, and even Oracle, the product manager, and the technical side, they're like, "Wow, really?" That's an unsolved problem.

We deployed it just fine, and implemented it just fine, as everything was squeaky clean, except for what we did wrong, which was essentially user error.

It's rock solid. We've had absolutely no issues with instability.

We can add users without issues. We're able to scale just fine.

Setting up all the metadata and the RPD takes a lot of work. Then, of course, it migrates through the physical layer, the business model layer, and the presentation layer. At that point, we can turn OBIEE loose to some of our customers. Some of them are quite skilled, and they like the hands-on. Some of them are not.

We had an Oracle consultant come in to help us. The DBAs actually installed OBIEE and set up the RPD. I'm not sure that, even now, that was set up optimally. We learned a lot as we went along. It's like, "Now we're this far down the road, and it sure would have been nice to know this back here," because I found that going back and trying to really change some of the structure is difficult.

Every Oracle product is expensive, so OBIEE was expensive as well.

Depending on the skill level of the people who are actually going to be the BI administrators and developers, I would suggest a consultant, someone who is well-versed and knows the in's and out's, to help implement OBIEE. As I said, we had an Oracle consultant. When he came in, one of the first things we did was sent him to some training for OBIEE. I'm not sure how that came about, but it seemed a little strange to me. The way I look at it, when you hire a consultant to come in and help you, I'm expecting that person to have the background and the knowledge.

The guy did a great job, but there was the training thing that just didn't register. He was a great help to those of us who now develop the solutions for the customer. It was good experience having him there. It was a collaborative effort. I was sitting over his shoulder until I couldn't take it anymore. I said, "No, I have to touch it." You've got to just jump in there and do it. That foundation, seeing some of the stuff he did, and the way he went about it, I think, is invaluable.

The most valuable feature for us is the ability for endusers and superusers to do some deeper dives without IT intervention. It allows our users to be more responsible and to manage their data a little more responsibly without IT interference.

OBIEE is essentially a queue-based data mining tool that allows all aspects of the business, from finance to manufacturing, to do a little more data analysis on our 24/7 operational data.

I wish there was a way you could implement real-time data easier rather than through the ETL process. I know that Oracle's got their own ETL process that does have that feature, though.

We've been using it for a couple years now.

We've had no issues with deployment.

I'd say it's pretty stable. With anything that's web-based, there are some issues with browsers, but nothing huge that's obvious.

But with some of the ETL processes, such as bringing in new pieces of data like cost categories, anything from the EBS Suite into the cube, you can get issues.

We don't have that many functional users using it, so scaling has not been a true issue for us.

We use a third-party hosting solution. A lot of the setup in technical maintenance is all handled through them. I know we've logged several SR's for several OBIEE issues.

We set it up with the stock Oracle solution because we purchased a lot of the stock reporting cubes. We've slowly added our own custom ETL processes to pull data as needed. Since we're a 24/7 manufacturing company, there's a lot of data that wasn't there that we've had to slowly bring in. We're still fighting through a lot of it, and since it's not a priority service, it's kind of a secondary function. There's gain on it, but it's definitely lower on our priority list than a lot of the day-to-day, 24/7 operations.

Make sure they understand the true use of it. Originally, we were shown the dashboard, all the great features that come with OBIEE and OBIA. But we weren't truly told what it takes to maintain it, what it takes to get valuable data for our company out of it. It's a lot more work than Oracle led us to believe at first.

• Integrated search options
• Oracle scorecards
• Pivot tables
• Map views

When reports are developed in a way that show the work done in time, work done but not in time, and work not done at all, they drive the customers to pay attention to the lagging areas. This encourages everyone to work positively towards achieving the fixed goal in hand.

Some of the legacy BI publisher features have been discarded in the newer versions. Having them would help the product. The ability to provide column description upon hovering on the header would be of real help.

I've used it for five years.

No major issues.

No major issues.

Some of the issues were in regards to the LDAP authentication setup, but it was resolved.

7/10.

7/10.

No previous solution was in place.

It was pretty straightforward and simple. All we had to do was follow the installation manual, which provides a UI to setup the tool.

It was done in-house.

All the ventures that were started based off of this product were successful. The users were actively using the dashboards and reports, while the executive level management were able to view the functioning of their respective organizations on high-level view.

Ensure you purchase a complete enterprise package from Oracle so you can get the full benefit of OBIEE.

• Crystal Reports
• SQR Reports

Ensure the application server and the web server are installed and configured as recommended.

Dashboards, Alerts, BI Publisher. Together these 3 features make this product a great tool to present data. Users can also create ad hoc analyses easily. Integrates very well with a wide variety of data sources making it easy to present data from multiple sources in a single place.

One stop shop for all reporting, data integrity, and compliance with company standards.

Performance for large data sets.

12 years

Setting up SSL can be complex. Documentation is confusing. But other sources of information such as blogs really help.

Sometimes when lots of users get in and try to run the same report at the same time with different parameters.

Prompt but not always helpful.

Poor

Depends on the requirements and infrastructure, but proper planning makes it pretty straightforward.

In-house

Being rollover customers from a previously owned company there was confusion about licensing. Talking to an Oracle rep helped.

Excellent BI tool that is flexible and user-friendly, and getting better with each new release.

We are a solution provider and Oracle OBIEE is one of the products that we implement for our clients. We do not use it in our company. Our clients use it for management and business intelligence.

The most valuable feature is the user-friendly set of tools that the customer can use to develop their own business dashboards.

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.

Performance-wise, there may be some room for improvement.

We have been dealing with Oracle OBIEE for the past three years.

The OBIEE  tool can only be used in enterprise-level companies. It is not suitable for small and medium-sized companies because of the cost. Also, the complexity of it means that you need a technical team to install it and develop the reports. 

We are satisfied with the support we are getting from Oracle.

We have experience with several solutions including Zoho and Microsoft BI.

The initial setup is not easy, although it is not very complex either.

The average deployment will take a week, although this will increase depending on the complexity of the environment.

The cost of this solution is a little bit high compared with other products like Zoho, so reducing it would make OBIEE more competitive.

The suitability of this product depends on the client's objective and the complexity of the business. We also have to consider their budget.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.