Oracle OBIEE Reviews

It has easy integration with Oracle DB for clients who run an Oracle Warehouse.

It has given clients visibility into their operations from a holistic viewpoint. In my current project, we are using the tool to track movement of cases, managements, and clients are able to trace where their cases are and how long they have been in the different stations in the organization. This has improved on the overall performance of the organization as there is accountability.

There is a need to improve on meta data definition, for instance we should have one Dat Dimension that allows heterogeneous definitions. At the moment, every subject area has a copy, this is repetitive effort. There is a need to easily report from different facts without having to circumvent the system's normal design.

Metadata management, more visualizations as there aren't many, i.e. heat maps. The Dashboard layout area could be enhanced to allow more intuitive designs, as the limitations of having Sections and Columns in the sort of order they can in can inhibit exciting designs. Exporting of related Physical Joins without having to go to each join to extract.

I've used it for eight years.

Yes, at one client we upgraded versions and lost functionality due to the fact that Oracle had stopped supporting Office 2007. In the newer versions, we had to go through a lot of trouble to get the functionality to work, it was a very simple thing. In the newer version, when we exported graphs it ignored the lines and the tables were merged into a single line, and you can imagine why the management were not happy with that.

Customer Service:

5/10 - I really believe that they can improve in customer service.

Technical Support:

6/10

We did use something previously, and we changed as we wanted better functionality and stability.

I have not dealt with implementations a lot.

We used a mixed team. The vendor had guys that knew what they were doing, even at some point, better than the Oracle team.

Pricing of the training should be lowered to allow more new entrants into the the field. If the price is too high, mainly existing partners can afford it, and the market does not grow. The licensing is fair, but they should try and bundle the licensing cost as licensing as almost every component tends to hike the overall price.

I have worked on Microstrategy a lot and the Microsoft platform. I find that Microstrategy is advanced in the Mobile and Visual display and is easy to use, but Microsoft is also easy to use but still has a lot of things they need to improve on.

It's a very good platform provided you have a good strategy and a strong team around.

• Governance
• Centralized metadata model
• Integration (security, external visualizations, etc.)

Better and more interactive visualizations.

8 years

Clustering and security (SSL, SSO, etc) can be tough at times.

Support team is timely with responses, but working out through issues can take some time.

Yes, used Cognos (IBM) previously. Switch was due to management decision.

Initial (simple) set up is straight forward, but complex environments (multiple nodes, complex security requirements) can be complicated. That said, once set up the tool is very flexible and addresses enterprise-wide requirements

This is a good solution, but its strengths (centralized, secure, enterprise-wide reporting) can also be seen as weaknesses if you are looking for a more flexible, lighter-footprint reporting package with better visuals. That said, newer versions of the tool have gone a long way to catch up on the visuals side (new views, external viz options, etc) and flexibility as well (BI Cloud Service).

Dashboard capability along with tightly integrated enterprise level security are really the most used features for me in OBIEE. It's also capable of delivering Scorecarding, Geo Mapping & multi source capabilities.

End users can't change their password on their own.

5+ years

Oracle support has always been quick.

Initial setup is straightforward through a wizard based interface.

OBIEE is a truly enterprise level product with the capability to scale & tight security. But it requires a specialized technical team during customization which might make it not economical for small scale customers.

The solution offers a wide range of software tools to meet various needs, such as those concerning reports, developer solutions like APEX and the integration of data. 

The ability to migrate from one version to another, such as doing so from version 11 to an upgraded 12 of Oracle business environment, can be difficult. The usage is not straightforward. 

I have been using Oracle OBIEE for perhaps two years. 

The solution has private deployment and only in respect of on-premises products.

I rate Oracle OBIEE as a ten out of ten. 

On-premises

We primarily use this product for company-wide data warehouse reporting.

The most valuable feature is the ability to set up the automated delivery of reports. It is a feature that is nice, as well as easy to do.

It takes a lot of maintenance to support the architecture, which is something that should be improved. Having a more simplified architecture would be better.

It should be easier to make changes or enhancements, as it is a long process to make a change in the system.

We have been using Oracle OBIEE for about ten years.

I don't find the stability of this product to be great.

Scalability is something that could be improved.

The initial setup was complex.

We used a consulted to assist us with deployment.

Oracle products are extremely expensive. However, the version that we have is older and we no longer pay licensing fees.

I would rate this solution a five out of ten.

On-premises

Oracle OBIEE came out very early, compared to the other BI products, the other competitors’ products. It was pretty much the first in the market. It grabbed a good portion of the market. That's one important feature: They have been there forever.

We do have ad-hoc reporting. A few thousand users run ad-hoc reports. They run SQLs for data, extract the data and use the data. Some users use the dashboards.

Stability-wise, they still have a lot to improve, especially when you have a lot of data coming out of SQL. For example, if I have to see a million requests, most of the time it crashes.

Scalability is fine. I don't see any issues. Scalability-wise, most of the time, they depend on the underlying WebLogic server. The WebLogic server scales fine.

We always have problems with Oracle support. When they cannot solve an issue, they always go around and around with it. Time passes and users get frustrated - the customer gets frustrated – getting the ticket closed.

If there is an easy solution or they have come across the issue already, that’s when they are responsive. However, if they don’t know the answer right away, or if you don’t quickly hear back from Oracle, or if you don’t like the answer you get from Oracle, that’s when you can go through this; you might never get the solution. It’s better to just close the ticket and not waste that time.

I did not previously use a different solution. We kind of started this project from scratch. We use all Oracle products and Oracle support. We thought, OK, why use a different product if we can get a good product from Oracle?

Setup is good; easy and simple.

Before choosing this product, I did not evaluate other options.

If someone asked me for advice, I would throw out a few options and let them pick which one is better. I’d provide whatever I know about this product and also other products, not just those from Oracle.

I don't know if Oracle wants to hear this, but there are other products in the analytical field that are pretty good. For example, Tableau.

For example, dashboard-wise, other products are way better than OBIEE. Oracle still has to improve some of these issues, especially when there is a huge amount of data.

When I’m choosing a vendor such as Oracle, the most important criteria are that they are big; everything is integrated. For example, if I have to use Oracle Identity Management, it is integrated with OBIEE, including single sign-on. Everything is integrated.

The ability for users to generate analytics without developer involvement is valuable. The best feature of the Virtual C, of course, is data visualization.

The self-service BI and the dashboards for high-level management have brought improvements. We develop and produce insights with these dashboards, and make management take actions according to the knowledge we find there. The dashboards are also the power users, so the analytics build themselves. They create reports about the subject area that is relevant to them.

They could improve the connection with the ASCP base. The integration is not so good. There are a lot of bugs, hangs and freezes. If the ASCP base goes down or hangs, the OBIEE server is down, and we have to restart the VI server for the whole company.

I have used the product for 5 years.

Other than the integration with the ASCP base, there are some issues with exporting big Excel files. Oracle support says we should expect this though, because there is a limitation on the size of export files. Everything else is quite stable.

Response times are good and some of the support staff is good, but not everyone. They ask for a lot of logs that are not related to the issue and it takes time for them to understand the problem. In some cases, we beg to do a WebEx just to show them the problem so they can figure it out and proceed.

It is not that simple and requires a lot of configuration. The 12c version is supposed to be much easier.

It’s a very good application, but it’s not straightforward in the traditional BI. Take Oracle’s advice in best practices and how to implement it. I would rate it an 8 out of 10.