Oracle OBIEE Reviews

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.

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.

I have been working with Oracle OBIEE for more than seven years.

It is very stable.

The architecture of Oracle OBIEE is defined, and within the architecture, it is definitely scalable. You extend the repository and the data model layer. In the server setting, you have the flexibility to include the security aspects that Oracle supports. I feel it is extremely extendable. Our clients are enterprise-level companies.

There are challenges in getting a response from Oracle. We have faced challenges with Oracle technical support. Whenever we raise a request, the response comes very late. There is some delay.

I have been working with this solution for over seven years in an implementation role. By using the features and tools available in Oracle OBIEE, I am able to identify the cause and debug and validate it.

The initial setup is straightforward. It doesn't take much time. If you do the setup and implementation, it will take two to three days.

It is a nice tool that can be modeled for each and every requirement. To be able to develop and deploy it quickly as per the customer needs, you should have the right implementation person who understands the customer's requirements and has a total understanding of the product. 

I would rate Oracle OBIEE an eight out of ten.

Basically reporting, and we have a couple of modules which we bought. OBIEE, which is used financial procurement and reporting purposes.

I think in the older version, 11g versus 12c, Oracle has thought through so many things. I think the installation is a lot simpler. I think they have improved a lot. If you asked about the older one, maybe I would have given you many reasons, but not with the new one.

It's close to four years now, or even more, maybe close to five years.

It is a stable product and I think we are on the latest and greatest. We are in the process of upgrading to 12c, and any product you take, it will have some issues, so it's not something we run into a lot of issues with.

I think the amount of reporting, the amount of users that we have, I think we are pretty solid and how we scaled it I think the end user is very happy.

When you open up SR Oracle has a list of things which they ask for. Being an end customer, when we open an SR, we give as much as information as we want and again the support person comes into the picture, and without reading what we have put through, they just has the same questions over and over. What version, what product, all that kind of things, which is not at all fair.

We used to have Interactive Reporting which is an Oracle product. Hyperion Interactive Reporting.

I would say if you want to make your financial reporting simpler and easier, and you can put it towards the end user, and the way you can control the things, and show the graphical use, or ease of use, and functionality, it's very simple for the financial user or end users. I think it's very good product.

Maybe not all products are up to the speed or like any product you take, there is space to improve. I think for our company, the way we use it, we are very happy with it and the end customer is very happy with it.

• Oracle Analysis
• Dashboard
• Agents

Enhancements to existing OBI Components -

• Analysis
• Connectors
• Self-service BI
• Performance

I've used the tool for seven years.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

It was already in place when I joined the company.

It's straightforward for installation and configuration. The complexity of the development varies depending on the business requirements. We have complex reports and dashboards being sourced from different data sources.

It was done in-house. Analyze the requirements do a POC to get the sign off of what is going to be delivered. Analyze the complexity and technical challenges, and look for workarounds to implement the solution if needed.

Evaluate the product before any implementation of any reporting tools.

Exalytics combined with Exadata server makes it possible to query ~ 50TB of datamart data (uncompressed size), that's really great and ~ 1000 of simultaneous requests.

In the past it was not possible to join data from so many different sources due to the performance limitations imposed by the size of the data

Self service BI. It's clear that Endeca tends to be integrated into BIFS and probably self-service functionality will be covered by Endeca.

3 years

Sometime copy-paste of report metadata is quite complicated.

No

No, scalability is a big positive for the product.

We didn't get into contact with support. From previous projects I have very various experience with Oracle support. It happened to me to get very helpful solutions almost immediately, in other cases, we were just ping-ponging emails, but no breakthrough.

No

The initial setup was pretty complex due to the fact that very complicated aggregation rules were defined, but I think this would have even more complicated to be implemented with other BI tools.

I was part of a vendor team.

N/A

We are not involved in this phase.

Oracle BI combined with Exadata/Exalytics is a perfect tool for ROLAP/HOLAP type reports especially for extreme data sizes. I don't know any other tool suitable for that.

We primarily use the solution to take reports and for its dashboards.

The visualization is very good.

From an end-user perspective, it's a very user-friendly environment.

There are pages about its limitations in Gartner documents. My understanding is they are working to improve themselves. There aren't any really big issues and they're already in the cloud, therefore, largely there isn't too much that's lacking.

The pricing model could be improved. Right now, it's quite confusing. Many customers have this feeling that it's a super-expensive option.

Currently, the solution is based on three pillars. The first is the BI publisher and it used to be a single product. The second is Oracle and Oracle Business Intelligence, the core component. It used to be a CBO product. Then, thirdly, you have this new Oracle visual analyzer. Now, all of these are wrapped into one Oracle analytics product. However, the integration between (or among) these three products is not 100% complete. This is the area where improvements can be made.

I've been using the solution for more than ten years at this point. It's been a while.

It's pretty stable. Now that it's the cloud era, the company is supporting it 24/7. If there is any issue, it's very well supported. It's very stable in our eyes. 

The support is quite good. You do pay for it, however, it's available when you need it. We're quite satisfied with the level of service provided.

I have some experience with Microsoft Power BI.

Power BI is more self-service BI oriented. It originated in the era of self-service BI. That's both a plus and minus, depending on what you are looking for. For example, if you prefer more self-service oriented solutions, you get more freedom with Power BI. You provide your business users with more freedom and that could be good or bad. It depends on the situation. 

Oracle Business Intelligence comes from the era of more IT-driven business intelligence solutions. It's more metadata-driven. You can establish stronger governance with Oracle BI in terms of implementing policies and data, data filtering, data governance, and user rights, etc. Ironically, Power BI wants to have more options to be tightly governed, and Oracle is trying to be more self-service oriented. 

The initial setup is not complex. It's pretty straightforward. Deployment typically takes three days or so.

The solution has a reputation for being expensive and has a confusing pricing model. There aren't extra fees on top of the main licensing costs, however.

We're an Oracle partner.

Overall, I would rate the solution eight out of ten.

The solution is better suited for medium or large organizations, mostly due to the high price tag. A smaller company would be hard-pressed to afford it.

That said, I would recommend it to others to use.

On-premises

OBIEE is used to generate data reports and send to users' emails. The company leaders use its summary report to overview the KPIs of the company. Department operators use its detailed report to monitor daily sales. 

• A detailed data report is generated for business operators.
• Summary and aggregated data for leaders.

• It's easy to use for business analysts.

• Can utilize SQL queries to generate reports directly.

• Access and permission management.

Metadata management function: Sometimes, our business requirements need to load reference data into the data model.

One to three years.

OBIEE crashes when many people login at the same time.

When a large number of queries are running at the same time, the report fails.

The upgrade from version 10 to 11 drastically changed the perspective of our company's users from the perspective of the data analysis they can do. It's now much easier for our developers to mash up their repositories from different data sources, create new dashboards, create graphs, and send emails via agents.

I think OBIEE is going to go away and I don't see new things to be added to it. If anything, it needs a diagnostic tool for looking at logs.

Also, Oracle needs to make WebLogic much simpler to use. With WebLogic you have a vast number of things in there. If you're not an OBIEE admin, then you don't know what you're doing. You can't have developers do the admin stuff and it needs to be a little simpler to navigate between. Also, you have an enterprise manager and then you have a console manager. Combining those two in one place would make it simpler.

I don't recall for sure, but I've used it for a number of years now, from version 10 to the current version 12.

We've had no issues with deployment.

We've had issues with stability, both hiccups and large. One issue we had was difficulty with error logs. We've had to dive really deep in order to find error logs. If someone asks for them, you really have to know where to look.

We run a homogenous data set and OBIEE has been scalable.

Technical support has been nice. When we create a ticket, Oracle reps get back to us via email or phone depending on the severity of the incident. Some tickets take a while, and some don't take long at all.

The setup was challenging because we were upgrading from version 10. We had challenges with services and cores, especially with Java memory. It kept running out, particularly with the WebLogic implementation. We really didn't know where to go from there because it change the Java memory.

Before using it, make sure you really understand the product. It also helps to know Java. You also need to know how WebLogic works, as well as how the integration between EM and OMB works.