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Oracle Essbase vs Oracle OBIEE comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

Oracle Essbase
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
4.6
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
Database Development and Management (12th)
Oracle OBIEE
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
158
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (12th), Reporting (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

Oracle Essbase and Oracle OBIEE aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Oracle Essbase is designed for Database Development and Management and holds a mindshare of 1.1%, down 1.2% compared to last year.
Oracle OBIEE, on the other hand, focuses on BI (Business Intelligence) Tools, holds 1.7% mindshare, down 3.9% since last year.
Database Development and Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Oracle Essbase1.1%
Redgate SQL Toolbelt Essentials5.3%
SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer4.9%
Other88.7%
Database Development and Management
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Oracle OBIEE1.7%
Microsoft Power BI10.8%
Tableau Enterprise7.6%
Other79.9%
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Bhavya N - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior System Engineer at Infosys
Ensuring efficient data analysis and reporting while identifying areas for calculation and export improvements
The features of Oracle Essbase are valuable, such as its multi-dimensional database used for dynamic calculations and reporting purposes. These features are valuable because they support multi-dimensional data views, allowing users to analyze relationships across various data categories and establish a comprehensive perspective on business operations. Moreover, dynamic calculations allow real-time data analysis, significantly improving the accuracy and depth of financial insights. I have utilized Essbase's data aggregation capabilities. The Oracle Essbase interface provides a good user experience, allowing users to easily navigate and analyze data with fast query performance, effective data visualization tools such as charts, graphs, and tables, and flexibility for customizable analysis and reporting, including the ability to create ad hoc reports. The benefits of the interface include improving productivity and enhancing decision-making.
reviewer2701689 - PeerSpot reviewer
Innovation & Data Management Enterprise Architect at a government with 1,001-5,000 employees
Facing a complex learning curve challenges, automation capabilities provide some clerical work savings
Oracle OBIEE has a steep learning curve compared to tools like SQL Server or Power BI. In situations where complex problem-solving is required, Oracle's support tends to direct users to sales representatives with limited technical knowledge, which is less than ideal. Additionally, the solution is more expensive than using Microsoft's reporting tools.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Essbase is extremely stable and low-maintenance."
"It's a very powerful analytical engine with Essbase as the back end. We can analyze, transform, or utilize a big chunk of data for our calculations."
"It helps us fetch specific data sets per users' requirements."
"It is very fast compared to other normal databases, like SQL and MySQL."
"The solution can handle a large volume of data."
"With Oracle Essbase, everything is centralized in a comprehensive financial statement analysis, allowing for complete management of budget, actuals analysis, and forecast."
"The solution is scalable."
"It is highly efficient and easily scalable, particularly for handling large databases."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to set up the automated delivery of reports."
"The solution is easy to use and very flexible."
"The security is good. For example, we can implement column-level security."
"There are some great new features in the latest version."
"We can see almost-real-time performance in our operations. When there is a problem, it is easy to escalate it to top management and the time for management to make a decision about it is much shorter than it would be using a manual process."
"The complexity that OBIEE can handle in the form of RPD is unmatched. I haven't found this level of complexity in other reporting tools, especially when dealing with complex calculations that are not readily available in the reporting layer."
"For me, it makes the difference is in terms of our users being able to take advantage of a product which allows you to get access to data, reports, make decisions quickly, and have better insights regarding operations."
"The primary reason for using OBIEE is connectivity with Oracle E-Business Suite. It makes it easy to connect with our Oracle E-Business Suite. There are the standard dashboards available, which we sometimes use, and now we are looking for customized dashboards."
 

Cons

"The solution could enhance business analytics. I delved into the data using Oracle Essbase to create a new support tool."
"I would like to see an integration with application performance management and a version control management tool."
"There is room for improvement in terms of cost-effectiveness."
"The reporting tool of Essbase needs improvement."
"They should improve the solution's performance."
"The consolidation engine, which is HFM or FCCS, needs some room for improvement."
"The ability to drive external reporting out for development could be improved."
"The initial setup is pretty complex."
"In the on-premises version, the feature for connecting and selecting the data between the databases looks a bit cumbersome, but I am not sure. The person who is using it takes a lot of time to design a data warehouse. When I ask him why is it taking this long, I get a response that this is something that he has to design, and there are different tools that are available. He has to write the ETL and design the warehouse according to the customer's requirement, which takes a lot of time. Its visualization should be enhanced, and there should be a feature where you can easily create your custom data warehouse."
"The performance and the complex setup are the main reason for switching to Qlik Sense."
"The platform's data visualization features need improvement."
"The performance could improve and in a future release, they could provide more virtualization options."
"Essbase integration needs to be worked on."
"I would like to see Machine Learning included in this solution."
"Oracle OBIEEE's performance and licensing costs could be improved."
"Oracle OBIEE could improve by having better integration and compatibility with other vendors."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is a costly solution."
"The solution is expensive."
"Essbase is competitively priced."
"I believe the licensing is on a monthly base."
"The cost of this solution is a little bit high compared with other products like Zoho, so reducing it would make OBIEE more competitive."
"It is high."
"Its licensing is yearly."
"In our organization, we use a user-based license for Oracle OBIEE, and I've heard that the license cost is based on the number of users."
"Oracle products are extremely expensive."
"Pricing is an area that could be improved."
"Power BI is less expensive than Oracle OBIEE. A benefit to Power BI is having the option to work with concurrent licensing."
"It's expensive."
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Comparison Review

it_user79932 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager - BI Head with 5,001-10,000 employees
Feb 4, 2015
Comparison of SAP BO, Tableau, QlikView, Cognos, Microsoft, OBIEE and Pentaho
1. SAP BO/BI Enterprise scalability Security Ease of use Semantic layer 2. Tableau Visualization Data discovery Turnaround time 3. IBM Cognos Enterprise scalability Security In-memory feature 4. MS BI - Flexibility 5. Pentaho - Open source but still enterprise grade 6. QlikView Data…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
21%
Insurance Company
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Government
11%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise14
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business40
Midsize Enterprise34
Large Enterprise102
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Oracle Essbase?
It's not that expensive, but also not cheap. I'm not sure because it's a private license.
What needs improvement with Oracle Essbase?
A significant area for improvement in Oracle Essbase is that financial statement analysis, CAPEX and OPEX analysis, and financial consolidation must be done manually, as Oracle Essbase doesn't incl...
What is your primary use case for Oracle Essbase?
The initial setup of Oracle Essbase is dependent on whether you select BSO or ASO cubes. First, you need to set up the type of information and once the type of cubes is defined, you need to define ...
How does Oracle OBIEE compare with Microsoft BI?
Oracle OBIEE is great in allowing design and creativity per the individual needs of the organization. Dashboards are fully customizable and very user-friendly. This solution is very stable. Oracle ...
Which Oracle product is better - OBIEE or Analytics Cloud?
Oracle OBIEE is designed to be relatively easy to set up and has a helpful customer support staff at the ready to assist customers. These are two attributes that make this system quite valuable. OB...
What do you like most about Oracle OBIEE?
The most valuable feature of Oracle OBIEE is its ability to handle large volumes of data and provide traditional BI functionalities that developers can easily understand.
 

Also Known As

Essbase
OBIEE, Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition, Oracle BI, Oracle BI EE 11g
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

CHU de Rennes, Bellco Credit Union, Akindo Sushiro Co. Ltd, Deutsche Telekom AG, Samarco MineraÊo S.A., PCCW Ltd., QDQ media S.A.U., Boiron Italia, Specialized Bicycle Components Inc., Akindo Sushiro Co. Ltd., Air Canada, Daelim Industrial Co. Ltd.
Banca Transilvania, BeckmanCoulter, Hong Kong Housing Society, HealthShare, Ivanhoe Cambridge Unifies, and Home Credit, and Finance Bank.
Find out what your peers are saying about Nutanix, Quest Software, Oracle and others in Database Development and Management. Updated: December 2025.
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