Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services vs Tableau comparison

Microsoft SQL Servering Services vs. Tableau

October 2024

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Categories and Ranking

IBM Cognos

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2024, in the Reporting category, the mindshare of IBM Cognos is 4.4%, down from 6.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services is 3.7%, down from 4.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tableau is 24.3%, up from 22.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Reporting

Featured Reviews

Carlos Larrad Salgado

Deputy Director Operations Management Control at Mapfre

Improved the quality of our KPIs, while reducing calls to the IT department

I don't like that when we use Colab packages, we get less functionality. For example, you can make groups of data with Excel or with the data sets from the packages, but when you use the Colab packages directly, you can only group the data when you analyze it with Analysis Studio. I think Cognos needs to improve more on this functionality. The user experience is also very important. Cognos is not very easy to understand sometimes, especially when they change the layout but keep the functionality the same. The help is not very graphic and they have no examples. Cognos has to make a big effort to help with understanding the functionality by improving the documentation. There is a lot of documentation, but the examples are hard to find and they should make their help section easier to understand for non-technical users.

Offers useful templates but needs to improve the connectivity offered

Gnanavel-Chakkarapani

Junior Consultant at CMA CGM

In Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services, not much of the interface part is used. With Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services, its users face issues with the interface after they use Excel or create Microsoft SSIS Packages. The tool's interface is an area of concern requiring improvement. There needs to be an improvement in the product's connectivity so that the tool can connect easily with other third-party databases. In the dashboard, drag and drop functionality needs to improve, especially when compared to other tools like IBM Cognos Analytics and Qlik Sense. Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services is useful only for standard reports. In IBM Cognos Analytics, query studio can be used by users to drag the data and simply download the reports, so the user doesn't need to have any technical knowledge like developers. Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services is to be improved to offer features like query Studio, which is provided in IBM Cognos Analytics.

Provides fast data access with in-memory extracts, makes it easy to create visualizations, and saves time

ROMIL SHAH

Deputy General Manger - Information Technology at Nayara Energy

When it comes to visualizations, Tableau has a limitation as compared to Power BI. It has a limited set of visualizations. Power BI has the entire marketplace, so you can connect and import many visualizations and use them, whereas Tableau has only 10 or 15 visualizations. There should be more visualizations, and there should also be data integration with more cloud providers. Tableau has recently launched a paid version for the documentation. So, documentation has become a little bit challenging when it comes to Tableau development because we do not have any tool to export the data out of it. It is a license-based feature that you need to purchase to prepare documentation. So, on the documentation front, for preparing clear documentation for any dashboard, it would help if we get an embedded option, rather than buying a license for each user for the documentation. To document anything, if I have to connect to each workbook and see what has been written as a formula and then document in the Word document, it is pretty time-consuming. We have the Microsoft stack, and we are currently evaluating Power BI because Tableau has a limitation of 50 columns for a drill-down report. If we want more than 50 columns, we have found a hack, but there is no ready-made option for doing it. So, we have to use another tool in case we need a drilled report with more than 50 columns. There are many instances where users need 80 or 90 columns for their analysis, and switching between two technologies becomes a challenge. It is not a cost-effective approach for us. Their support should be improved. We are not happy with their support. Whenever we raised queries, we were pointed to a few blogs, and we didn't get a proper solution from them. Their licensing should also be improved. They want us to purchase a Tableau Creator license for business users, whereas Power BI Desktop is free for business users. They should come up with a basic license with one or two connectors that our business users can use for preparing their visualizations. Tableau also charges us per user for users who want the data only through email.

More Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services pros

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"The three IBM Cognos features I find the most valuable are Dynamic Cubes, PowerPlay, and Watson."

"The solution's most valuable feature is its ease of use, which makes it easily compatible with other tools."

"IBM Cognos is an excellent solution for tax, planning, budgeting, profit and loss statements and balance sheets."

"Mapbox integration for geospatial analytics down to longitude/latitude layers."

"The most valuable feature is developing reports from different data sources, making it a reliable data source."

"The most valuable features of IBM Cognos are governance and enterprise reporting."

"The initial setup was straightforward."

"It's enabled us to report directly from our main application systems. We're removing islands of data and we're removing inefficiencies, where people or small divisions had their own store of information."

More IBM Cognos pros

"We can create quality reports in real time."

"I mainly use the solution for the ease of reporting and for executive dashboards."

"The stability of SSRS has been reliable, with minimal issues encountered during our usage."

"The SQL Server Reporting Services makes it very easy to get the data whenever we need it."

"I'm very satisfied with the customer service. And usually, whenever we have any issue or details, we get to the person for the support. I'm really satisfied with the service. Within a few minutes or within a few hours, the support person will be available."

"Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) is reliable for management dashboard and reporting purposes. It is helpful for user reporting and administrative tasks, such as monitoring progress. It is easy to use since it is lightweight and integrates well with the SQL Server database, making reporting straightforward. The visualization capabilities enhance our reporting needs with good pagination and KPI features. It integrates well with data servers and workbooks, allowing us to publish reports on mobile applications and tablets easily. Integrating other tools and platforms in our tech ecosystem is generally straightforward. However, if we need to perform something very specialized, we might have to use third-party tools rather than inbuilt options."

"The solution is known for its robust security features."

"The initial setup is easy."

"Visualization attributes: Marks – Color, Size, Label, etc.. Easily Accessible and Intuitive."

"Technical support has been responsive."

"It has been the best tool to work with from a self-service point of view."

"The ability of filtering and segmentation of the data makes it very flexible compared to other tools."

"All features are valuable. It is very user-friendly, and it is mostly drag-and-drop. If we have the dataset available, then we can develop any dashboard very quickly."

"This solution has transformed us from an Excel reporting environment to one of visual exploration."

"The best use case for us is the solution's integration with Salesforce because we are also partners of Salesforce."

"You can create attractive dashboards that inform users using Tableau."

More Tableau pros

Cons

"There are many problems with the product's stability part, making it an area where improvements are required."

"Most of our company's customers want to be able to deploy IBM Cognos on a web application and use it as a desktop application, which is not possible currently."

"I think the GIS pieces maybe not as good as we would like."

"The solution's support could be better."

"Extending features on dashboards so it becomes a real dashboard building application, not only a data exploration tool."

"Extending dynamic cubes aggregate awareness with calculated measures."

"I would like to have predictive and forecasting capabilities in Cognos. It's one thing to do reporting, and another thing to easily predict or forecast certain data points, which is very important for all the clients."

"The tool needs to improve the connectivity since I see that, at times, there is a need to increase the memory in the database."

More IBM Cognos cons

"Tableau is more user-friendly because it doesn't need to do any extra programming. It has drag-and-drop functionality."

"Sometimes, we need to make sure that the configuration stays consistent across the reporting instances. They all connect to the same database. So, it shares that same backend, but the reporting services itself can also be configured. On the application level, for reporting level. And it is, based on my own experience, it is a manual effort to make sure that the reporting servers are configured the same across the environment."

"We have had issues with the refresh interval since we have too many reports scheduled. Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services is also expensive."

"It is not easy to integrate the product with other tools in the market."

"The setup is difficult because you have to install different servers."

"It would be really nice to have better integration between the solution and Power BI."

"The product should improve its performance."

"The product could be improved by reducing the time it takes to build and deploy reports."

More Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services cons

"The product's features for cloud integration need improvement."

"It will be good if the server, could be more stable, and I would like to have the technical service to be more reliable."

"I would like the solution to have certain features allowing the delivery of reports to the email."

"The pricing is a bit higher than the competition. They'll need to lower it to stay competitive."

"In the next release, I would like to be able to have the option to see more raw data that I'm converting on the dashboard."

"An advanced type of visualization is a bit tricky to create. It has something called a Calculated field, and that sometimes gets a bit difficult to use when you want to create an advanced type of visualization."

"Formatting controls could use some improvement."

"Could have more integrations with different platforms."

More Tableau cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's more expensive than similar solutions like Tableau and Power BI."

"It is pretty expensive."

"The pricing of this product is meant for medium to large-scale enterprises."

"There is some additional licensing that we needed to purchase because we were touching data outside of our core data platform. The cost was approximately $25,000 for the additional licenses, which were approximate 45 licenses. For the application itself, updates, and the core platform it was approximately $50,000. Giving a total cost of $75,000 annually for our usage of IBM Cognos."

"IBM Cognos offers competitive pricing similar to other BI vendors in the market."

"The solution is affordable."

"Pricing should be improved."

"I don't know the exact cost, but I believe Cognos is quite expensive, especially when it comes to the support consultants and the procedures that need to be applied."

More IBM Cognos pricing and cost advice

"The solution is cheaper than its alternatives."

"Value-wise, the solution's pricing is good for the price that we pay."

"The solution is expensive."

"The price is pretty good."

"The product pricing is reasonable in terms of suitable features for business."

"The solution is free to use for developers."

"The tool's licensing costs are expensive."

"The pricing is high."

"The solution is expensive but it depends on the customer's needs which will determine the cost of the licensing."

"Tableau is an expensive solution."

"The price could be higher for the quality of software, so they revised the pricing in this version, and I agree with the price for top version. The top version costs about $70 per month, and the price is cheap for the quality."

"Its price is higher than Power BI and QlikView. Tableau costs around $70 per user per month, whereas Power BI is around $8 to $9. QlikView is around $30. Tableau has various prices for various models such as Creator, Designer."

"The pricing of Tableau should be better to remain competitive in the market, especially when compared to alternatives."

"The cost is high."

"It is a bit difficult for some people when they hear $70.00 per month, as some solutions are available for less than $10.00 or for free."

"Tableau's prices are relatively high for our market. I am from Serbia, so many companies in this market don't have the ability to pay for expensive software. My clients are quite satisfied with a lot of Tableau's qualities except for the prices."

More Tableau pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Reporting solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

816,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Comparison Review

it_user6330

Product Manager at a retailer with 10,001+ employees

May 2, 2013

MicroStrategy vs. Tableau

After a recent presentation, several attendees asked me about the applications of Visual Insights and Tableau. Many companies are investing in both tools and are trying to figure out the right tool for specific applications Tableau has found its sweet-spot as an agile discovery tool that analysts…

Seeking lightweight open source BI software

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

56%

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

14%

Government

12%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Educational Organization

40%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

It depends on the Data architecture and the complexity of your requirement. Some great tools in the market are Qlik ...

What do you like most about IBM Cognos?

The solution's most valuable feature is its ease of use, which makes it easily compatible with other tools.

What needs improvement with IBM Cognos?

I need improvements, particularly with the Framework Manager, which has an outdated user interface from older version...

What do you like most about Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services?

I mainly use the solution for the ease of reporting and for executive dashboards.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services?

Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services should be okay if you're within the budget. We're just using open-source solu...

What needs improvement with Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services?

QL Server can support the customer language in the long term, so we can use another language to build some components.

Tableau vs. Business Objects - Which is a better solution for visualization and analysis?

Both tools have their positives and negatives. First, I should mention that I am relatively new to Tableau. I have be...

Which would you choose - Tableau or SAP Analytics Cloud?

Tableau is easy to set up and maintain. In about a day it is possible for the entire platform to be deployed for use....

What do you like most about Tableau?

Tableau is a fantastic tool that provides impressive dashboards and customized reports.

Microsoft Power BI vs IBM Cognos

Comparisons

Compared 13% of the time

Oracle Hyperion vs IBM Cognos

Compared 10% of the time

Amazon QuickSight vs IBM Cognos

Compared 8% of the time

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform vs IBM Cognos

Compared 7% of the time

Databricks vs IBM Cognos

Compared 3% of the time

More IBM Cognos Competitors

TIBCO Jaspersoft vs Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services

Compared 22% of the time

Oracle OBIEE vs Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services

Compared 13% of the time

Microsoft Power BI vs Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services

Compared 11% of the time

SAP Crystal Reports vs Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services

Compared 9% of the time

QlikView vs Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services

Compared 6% of the time

More Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services Competitors

Microsoft Power BI vs Tableau

Compared 20% of the time

Domo vs Tableau

Compared 14% of the time

Amazon QuickSight vs Tableau

Compared 8% of the time

Databricks vs Tableau

Compared 5% of the time

Oracle Hyperion vs Tableau

Compared 2% of the time

More Tableau Competitors

Product Reports

Download IBM Cognos product report

IBM Cognos

November 2024

Microsoft SQL Servering Services

November 2024

Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services report

Download Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services product report

Download Tableau product report

Tableau

October 2024

Also Known As

Cognos, Cognos Analytics, IBM Cognos Analytics

SQL Server Reporting Services, Microsoft SSRS, SSRS, MS SQL Server Reporting Services

Tableau Desktop, Tableau Server, Tableau Online

Learn More

IBM

Microsoft

Salesforce

Overview

IBM Cognos Business Intelligence provides a wide range of tools to help you analyze your organization's data. IBM Cognos BI allows businesses to monitor events and metrics, create and view business reports, and analyze data to help them make effective business decisions.

IBM Cognos applies techniques to describe, summarize, and compare data, and draw conclusions. This allows users to see trends and discover anomalies or variances that may not be evident by simply reading data. Data sources that contain information from different areas of a business can be stored in separate packages. Users can see only information that they have been granted access to, based on their group or role.

IBM Cognos BI consolidates the following business intelligence functions into a single web-based solution:

IBM Cognos Insight: Create personal and managed workspaces for data analysis. Using these interactive workspaces, you can share insight results with managers. Cognos Insight supports write-back, and you can also use these workspaces to capture and integrate management goals, commitments, and forecasts.
IBM Cognos Workspace: With IBM Cognos Workspace, you can create rich, interactive workspaces using IBM Cognos content as well as data from external sources. You can view and open your favorite workspaces and reports, edit content in your workspaces, and share your workspaces via email.
IBM Cognos Analytics: IBM Cognos Analytics utilizes built-in AI and intuitive searches which helps users to quickly create the visualizations and a wide range of reports. Cognos Analytics provides cognitive and managed self-service, enabling you to gain insights from controlled and trusted data.
IBM Cognos Report Studio and IBM Cognos Query Studio: Easily create structured and query reports. IBM Cognos allows users to create application and report templates. In addition, report authors can reuse report objects to apply filters, fields, and styles to reports. Users can set the language of the user interface and report content according to the user's native language.
IBM Cognos Event Studio: Receive notifications of events that occur within your organization in real time. Event Studio enables the creation of agents that detect the occurrence of business events, failures, or anomalies, based on the change of specific events or data conditions. Notification can be sent via email, publication in the portal, or by triggering reports.
IBM Cognos Connection: This is the Web portal for IBM Cognos BI and is the central area for accessing all the IBM Cognos functions. In the web portal, users can schedule and distribute reports, create tasks, administer the server and the access permissions, and more.

Reviews from Real Users

IBM Cognos stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Two major ones are its powerful analysis tool and its reporting capabilities.

Prasad B., a senior software engineer at a financial services firm, notes, “The product is a very good reporting tool and is very flexible. It allows for the users to get a scheduled report. We can receive automated reports as well. They are easy to schedule on a weekly or monthly basis. It is very fast. I mean in means of report output, it's very fast compared to the actual clients involved.”

At Microsoft, our mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. Our mission is grounded in both the world in which we live and the future we strive to create. Today, we live in a mobile-first, cloud-first world, and the transformation we are driving across our businesses is designed to enable Microsoft and our customers to thrive in this world.

We do business in 170 countries and are made up of 114,000 passionate employees dedicated to fulfilling our mission of helping you and your organization achieve more.

Tableau is a tool for data visualization and business intelligence that allows businesses to report insights through easy-to-use, customizable visualizations and dashboards. Tableau makes it exceedingly simple for its customers to organize, manage, visualize, and comprehend data. It enables users to dig deep into the data so that they can see patterns and gain meaningful insights.

Make data-driven decisions with confidence thanks to Tableau’s assistance in providing faster answers to queries, solving harder problems more easily, and offering new insights more frequently. Tableau integrates directly to hundreds of data sources, both in the cloud and on premises, making it simpler to begin research. People of various skill levels can quickly find actionable information using Tableau’s natural language queries, interactive dashboards, and drag-and-drop capabilities. By quickly creating strong calculations, adding trend lines to examine statistical summaries, or clustering data to identify relationships, users can ask more in-depth inquiries.

Tableau has many valuable key features:

Tableau dashboards provide a complete view of your data through visualizations, visual objects, text, and more.
Tableau provides convenient, real-time options to collaborate with other users and instantly share data in the form of visualizations, sheets, and dashboards.
Tableau ensures connectivity to both live data sources and data extraction from external data sources as in-memory data. This gives users the flexibility to use data from more than one source without any restrictions.
Tableau gives many data source option, ranging from spreadsheets, big data, on-premise files, relational databases, non-relational databases, data warehouses, and big data, to on-cloud data.
Tableau has a lot of pre-installed information on maps, such as cities, postal codes, and administrative boundaries.
Tableau has a foolproof security system based on authentication and permission systems for data connections and user access. Tableau also gives you the freedom to integrate with other security protocols.

Tableau stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Some of these include its fast data access, easy creation of visualizations, and its stability. PeerSpot users take note of the advantages of these features in their reviews:

Romil S., Deputy General Manager of IT at Nayara Energy, notes, "Its visualizations are good, and its features make the development process a little less time-consuming. It has an in-memory extract feature that allows us to extract data and keep it on the server, and then our users can use it quickly.

Ariful M., Consulting Practice Partner of Data, Analytics & AI at FH, writes, “Tableau is very flexible and easy to learn. It has drag-and-drop function analytics, and its design is very good.”

Sample Customers

More than 23,000 leading organizations across multiple industries use Cognos. Some examples of Cognos customers include BMW Financial Services, Quinte Health Care, Troy Corporation, Michigan State University, and GKN Land System.

CMS Wire, The New York Times

Accenture, Adobe, Amazon.com, Bank of America, Charles Schwab Corp, Citigroup, Coca-Cola Company, Cornell University, Dell, Deloitte, Duke University, eBay, Exxon Mobil, Fannie Mae, Ferrari, French Red Cross, Goldman Sachs, Google, Government of Canada, HP, Intel, Johns Hopkins Hospital, Macy's, Merck, The New York Times, PayPal, Pfizer, US Army, US Air Force, Skype, and Walmart.