August 9, 2015 at 11:16 pm
I recently joined an organization which is providing support to Banking software. I have been assigned a task to find a better (cheap and easy for reporting, faster etc.) tool for Management Information system reports. This tool would be sending automated reports or they can pull fields of their own choice to build report as template and generate reports then. Their existing support team is using Cognos and they are looking for some other tool for their new development. I have no such idea where to go and how can I make a presentation to provide them right solution. They are using SQL Server 2012 for their new application on VS2013 on C#. Please let me know if we go for OLAP then I need to prepare a DW first. It could be offline and online database reporting.
Please help me on this.
Shamshad Ali
August 10, 2015 at 12:49 am
You can use SSRS to provide the same kind of reports that Cognos delviers but your current task is much bigger than just Cognos. You need a DW ( it doesnt need to be OLAP) and then create the reports off of it.
The best place to start in your case will be reverse engineer the cognos reports to find the data sources from which the data is being collected and then create a DW to store this data. If you already have a data warehouse where Cognos gets all its data from then SSRS might actually be able to directly connect to it and report the required data.
August 10, 2015 at 3:49 am
Thanks for reply. We have a different (new) product for which we are looking MIS tool only for BI management reporting purpose. They use Cognos for their existing live system until we are moved to new (under development) system. The new system is with different schema and we do not want to reverse engine for existing reports at the moment. I know SSRS is a tool for reporting, but as I mentioned earlier, we need some tool that users can use by their own wish to include some columns or remove them from reports or change the reporting view, grouping etc., and change report look as they want. SSRS is for once development by developers and the tool for which I am looking will be in users hands so that they can modify and use it to view reports from different angles. They can modify as they want and pull data out. That is what Cognos BI Analytic's is doing but SSRS can't. As for as Power BI tool by Microsoft is doing today, is tightly integrated with
Excel and you can further apply sorting, filtering or show graphs using excel features but it is all excel and Power BI but it is not user friendly you need to learn OLAP queries, Power BI tool, cubes etc.
So my question(s):
1- how do you compare Cognos with MS's Power BI tool. which one is best and why?
2- How do we deploy those BI reports made through Power BI and how do we assign those reports to users where they can easily make changes and retrieve reports? Do I need to setup Power BI tool on all users machines and train them OLAP queries etc. how to use Power BI tool and make changes in report look as they want?
4- How they can make such reports as templates (local) by individuals?
5- What is the best other tool in market and if we go for that one, how can I convince my management to use other tool based on feature comparison, pricing, easy to manage and user friendly?
We need a perfect solution and there is no chance of mistake at-least for me to keep my job up and running as I am on probation - everyone can understand what I mean.
Shamshad Ali
August 10, 2015 at 10:15 am
1- how do you compare Cognos with MS's Power BI tool. which one is best and why?
Power Bi is better when integrated with sharepoint, this gives you the drag and drop features you are looking for. You can also achieve this with SSRS Report Builder but there is a steeper learning curve.
2- How do we deploy those BI reports made through Power BI and how do we assign those reports to users where they can easily make changes and retrieve reports? Do I need to setup Power BI tool on all users machines and train them OLAP queries etc. how to use Power BI tool and make changes in report look as they want?
With Power BI for Sharepoint there is no need to install client side objects , also you should explore the cloud based option which allows you to query databases with PowerBI.
https://powerbi.microsoft.com/
4- How they can make such reports as templates (local) by individuals?
Again possbile in Power Bi as well as SSRS , plenty of tutorials out there on creating reports.
5- What is the best other tool in market and if we go for that one, how can I convince my management to use other tool based on feature comparison, pricing, easy to manage and user friendly?
Good question , this comes with experience. Looks like you might have bit off more than you can chew , talk to your manager , explain that there is some gaps in your understanding and you need more time to explore the best option. Then actually do your own research. Forums can only help to a small extent. You need to be practical. There is no way 1-2 weeks worth for research/ forums / reading is going to make you sound or look like an expert in MS BI technologies, accept it and show your team you are willing to learn to bridge the gap. Good luck either way.
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