Oracle OBIEE Reviews

The data modeling tier (called repository in Oracle BI technology) lets the user build and manage flexible, stable solutions for a large number of data sources, and business reporting areas.

I use the product to realize reporting and dashboard solutions on several telecommunication network test suites, thus not for any company organization aspect.

The catalog tool (to create report and dashboard)is not intuitive or easy to use. There are also some low severity bugs (up the 11.1.1.7 release).

I've used it for five years.

The product does not provide an automatic system maintenance service, thus log files continue to be collected on the disk up until it is full and it causes the whole platform stop. It requires continuous manual monitoring and deletion of log files.

The platform is powerful, scalable and flexible, but requires a huge commitment in term of people expertise in system and on the product.

6/10 - in some case they don’t help completely in finding smart solutions or workarounds for our issues.

We used Business Objects XI, and we switched to Oracle for a more impressive view, and a more interactive dashboard. OBIEE is also better equipped for the data modeling functionalities tier, and integrations.

It was complex, firstly for the platform setup, and secondly, it is required to have a large amount of knowledge and experience of the product before becoming an expert.

We implemented it in-house.

We use this solution as an adjudicator for an insurance company.

We are a development enterprise, and we sell the solutions we have to our customers. We have several customers that use our solutions in Oracle OBIEE. We are resellers.

The dashboard and analysis are the most valuable features of this solution.

I would like to see Machine Learning included in this solution.

We have been using Oracle OBIEE for almost ten years.

Oracle OBIEE is a stable product.

The scalability of Oracle OBIEE is good.

If you combine all of your customers there are almost 150 users.

Technical support is fine.

We are also experienced using Tableau. We have the same application ruling in both technologies.

Tableau is deployed on the cloud.

Pricing is an area that could be improved.

I would rate Oracle OBIEE a nine out of ten.

There are many valuable features. For example:

• Multiple data sources: I can easily combine multiple data sources and organize them into a common business model.
• Three-layer repository: With the three-layer repository, the development and interpretation are very simple. The three layers are divided from each other well both in logical and physical meaning. The physical layer is used for importing data, creating aliases, building physical joins, setting up connection pools, managing cache and hints for tables. The business model and mapping layer is used for creating logical columns, fact and dimension tables, hierarchies, measures, using fragmentations and filters, applying business logic. The presentation layer is used to prepare, group and organize the data for users to view.
• Security management: Security management is very detailed, complex and well defined in OBIEE. I can set up everything that I want; user security, object security, row-level security, etc. For example: I can easily connect users with application roles, different application roles with different privileges or set up data filters, other restrictions for users / application roles or manage subject areas/tables/columns access for users / application roles, etc.
• Smart cache management: I can easily manage cache and cache settings. I can use it for common tables only, I can purge it in a scheduled way, etc
• Interactive dashboards and analyses: Lots of rich visualization (dashboards, analyses, graphs, maps, etc); user interactions: drilling, pivoting, filtering, prompting, sorting, navigation and more.
• Spatial integration: Lots of rich map visualizations, many supported map suppliers and a wide range of possibilities to use map data.
• Individual customization using CSS and JavaScript.

I have worked for National Public Health and Medical Officer Service on the Child Birth Notification BI project. It was a very successful project both for us and the medical experts as well.

For example, with our analyses, the medical experts could improve healthcare and services at the regions where the child mortality was high.

Of course, there is some room for improvement, because a perfect BI platform does not exist in IT.

The following things would be welcomed:

• Detailed editing of dashboard prompts: By this, I mean the appearance and localization. If I create a dashboard prompt, I cannot edit freely the columns and texts on the user interface of dashboard prompts. For example, I cannot insert individual text fields that are independent from columns; I cannot use CSS to emphasize my texts of columns and the localization is quite limited as well.
• Smarter BI navigation using hierarchical columns: By this, I mean the navigation from a measure is quite difficult when I use hierarchical columns. When I use a hierarchical column in an analysis and expand the levels and click on a measure on the second level, for example, the BI does not know the appropriate level using navigation and it will result in wrong amounts. This is a known issue, according to the BI documentation, and there are other solutions, alternative ways to use navigation. Nonetheless, for hierarchical columns, it could be smarter.

I have used it for more than five years.

I have not encountered any stability issues with BI, but I did encounter stability issues with WebLogic.

I have not encountered any scalability issues. It has worked well.

I can't rate technical support, because I don't ask for help from OTN. Whenever I find any errors or have any issues, I read solutions or best practices from forums or BI channels.

I used only open-source solutions before OBIEE, but the functionality of these tools is not even close to OBIEE.

I think the install of OBIEE is not so complex; it's quite straightforward. Of course, the configuration can be complex, if we would like to use completely different settings from the default.

Unfortunately, this is the most difficult point with OBIEE. The license is very expensive.

When I first encountered OBIEE, I had no choice to use other options, because this platform was preferred at that company. That was five years ago and since that time, I have been using OBIEE and I can recommend using it to everyone.

On the other hand, if our customers would like to use an open-source BI platform, I can recommend using SpagoBI, for example.

I recommend using OBIEE because of its wide functionality (multiple data sources, interactive dashboards and analysis, spatial integration, delivers and alerts, mobiles, etc.).

In my opinion, it is one of the best BI platforms. It provides a full range of capabilities (from development to user experience).

I have worked on a lot of interesting and special projects, and I haven't been assigned any task that I could not do with it.

I like the solution's ability to query all of the data and pull it into a very user-friendly interface. We are using this as part of the Oracle Primavera suite.

I like the ability of the portfolio managers and schedulers to pull data in very easily and report out. This is the critical feature that we needed. This was the reason why we purchased it. You can configure what you need and make it look the way you want it to. The screens are set up in an excellent way. This solution has had a huge impact agency wide.

To reference the initial project setup structure for Oracle Projects and Oracle Portfolios- We need the ability to create layers and structure for projects. For example, Program Number, Project Number and Sub Project Number in a hierarchical structure that rolls up summary budgets for Programs and Projects for financial reporting. Also, each Program, Project and Sub Project may have a different name associated with it for tracking employee time entry. Portfolios are tracked by Sponsor’s name.

I would like to see a little more flexibility in the configuration.

We have been using this solution since June, 2016.

Oracle support was helpful when we needed them for installation and configuration. They provided excellent support.

We have been using Oracle for many years. We just needed to expand what we already had in Oracle. We have a solid database with Oracle.

The instructions and information that Oracle provided were very detailed. The challenge was that we didn’t have any prior experience with the installation and configuration. Oracle support has been great and helped us with the process.

We looked at third-party software, but we prefer to stick with Oracle. With Oracle, it’s easy to integrate with each of the suites and modules that we already had. We didn’t want the cost of integrating with third-party apps. This was an easy decision for us.

I would advise others to document what your current environment is and plan your installation and configuration ahead of time. It will then go smoother and faster. Plan your existing environment in detail and document it. This is critical.

When I look for a product, I focus on security, reliability, and ease of use.

• Dashboards - Thousands of users get the exact information that is relevant to them.
• Agents - The system automatically sends information when you need it.
• Answers - Power Users (aka Data Scientists) investigate the data.
• Integration - Analyse any data and present it in any format.

Implementation has led to a complete change in the way we create and consume information. People no longer spend hours creating spreadsheets; they now make informed decisions.

Right now, there's no ability to add comments to the dashboards. We'd like to be able to do that.

I've been using it for 16 years.

It's very easy to install.

The 12c version is much more stable than previous versions. We've had no real issues with instability.

The system will scale out easily to thousands of concurrent users. We've had no issues with the inability to scale.

Oracle provides good support, but the community is the place to go. Online experts, bloggers, conferences and the ACE program all contribute to a huge knowledge pool.

Microsoft Office products are great, but they don't scale to billions of rows.

You can go from download to fully-installed in just a couple of hours.

Negotiate hard! These products are not cheap.

I also looked at Power BI and Cognos.

Bring in an expert -- someone with real experience and who's independent.

It provides our customers the ability to build simple or complex reports effortlessly. The existence of the Business Model and Mapping (BMM) layer is critical in providing numerous ways to model our data to fit a given project/set of requirements.

It has allowed us to provide our external users the ability to create custom reports while adding a complex object security framework not found when dealing with internal users.

Cross-dimensional reporting was a must and although this tool does not easily implement this, it still allowed us to model our data as necessary in order to deliver this requirement.

The UI needs to be updated. We had some people reference it as “1995” in ways of looks. The application itself does not work well with cross-dimensional reporting out of the box (there are no official documentation on how this can be implemented but unofficial online user blogs have provided us with some work-around solutions).

I've used it for three and a half years.

There were no significant issues.

No issues encountered.

We had some issues with not being compatible with some “compatible” servers.

8/10.

8/10.

There are some cheaper options in the market. We are currently planning on using another platform outside our US market due to cost. However, some platform options are not as robust as OBIEE.

Careful consideration has to be given when evaluating cost over features/performance just like any other ROI project.

if your project involves a lot of cross-dimensional reporting, you will encounter some pain points along the way setting up the RPD but solutions are available online.

If you are looking for a quick visualization solution, then look for Tableau, but if you want a deep, proven reporting tool (with relatively weak visualization features), OBIEE is actually pretty good.

• BI Dashboards
• BI Publisher

We previously used a stand-alone desktop-based business reporting tool which did not enable us to maintain a single source of truth, or provide users with pervasive intelligence. However, with this enterprise solution, we have less reliance on the MIS teams to produce reports. Management and operational teams have access to information as and when they need it, insights pop up on a daily basis, and the business has transformed into a knowledge-empowered operation, with decisions at all levels being made on facts rather than guess work.

• Tighter integration of BI Publisher with RPD/BI answers is essential
• Enhanced big data tools will be valuable for industries like ours
• Simplified analysis drill-down setups
• Running BIP report once in the interactive view should not require a rerun when the view is switched, for example, to HTML or Excel

I've been using OBIEE for eight years in total. It's been three years on v11g, and prior to that I had been using v10 since 2007.

No issues with deployment.

We have experienced bottlenecks due to an increased load causing users to fail to login, or too many stuck threads. Perhaps the linkage between BI and Weblogic needs to be optimized to improve stability.

No issues with or scalability.

Customer service in general, is responsive enough to keep you aware of the fact that someone is looking into your issue.

Technical Support is only good when issues are escalated to the development or third line support teams.

Other solutions have been explored before. My reasoning for recommending OBIEE for my organization was that apart from having previous experience working in older versions, and being aware of its scalability, was that most of the banks systems are Oracle based which meant seamless integration. We also wanted to explore deployment of the Oracle Exalytics In-Memory Analytics Server which comes inbuilt with OBIEE.

It was straightforward because we had external assistance. However, due to the expertise we developed, we were able to build and test our backup server from scratch internally. We also restored the Exalytics system with ease after power issues caused the disks to crash.

Both sides need to be part of the team at each stage of deployment so that knowledge transfer is effective. The tendency for most vendors, however, is to avoid too much knowledge transfer for obvious reasons.

There is a need for a per CPU rather than per user license for OBIEE as this impacts the number of users that can be deployed, and therefore the level of security of data throughout the system.

The advanced visualizations and the semantic layer. These allow for easy design of the warehouse.

We use the forecasting modules with financial data from the ERP system (EBS) and Hyperion.

This allows us to predict how the company will perform in the coming quarter and to take appropriate measures to mitigate the loss.

We also know the fast moving products. We know how to stock and market out products.

• OBIEE visualizations are still behind compared to Tableau and QlikView
• Visualizations, such as Gantt charts, are not available in OBIEE out-of-the-box: Needs a workaround to enable them

I’ve used OBIEE for six years.

The latest version of OBIEE is very stable, especially if it’s running on TimesTen for Exalytics.

OBIEE is designed to be scalable. It scales the best compared to all the other BI products.

I would give technical support a rating 3/5.

We did use previous solutions. The upgrade was a corporate decision. This was based on several factors, such as the new features, the approaching end of support, and the cost of maintaining an old system.

The initial setup is never simple. It was a long and difficult journey. It needed a lot of cooperation from the ERP consultants.

For enterprise BI, OBIEE is still one of the best products. Oracle does give a good discount and ensures a successful implementation.

We evaluated BusinessObjects, Cognos, and MSBI.

Understand your data and what information you want to gather from it before embarking on the BI journey. Ensure that you have a strong team to implement it. The best tools are useless when they are poorly implemented.