Oracle OBIEE Reviews

Our primary use case is for getting reports.

It is very useful for doing your reports, and invoices, with great integration of other systems.

I have found the most valuable features are business intelligence and reporting.

The main problem we face is migrating all of the reports into the solution.

I have been using Oracle OBIEE for the past year.

There is high stability with this solution.

The initial setup was straightforward.

We have seen a return on investment.

Many people are using Microsoft Power BI because they are competitive, and Oracle OBIEE is more expensive.

I would rate Oracle OBIEE an eight on a scale of one to ten.

We are using it for analysis purposes for different areas, such as sales, production. We are also using it for the financial data and quality module. We have customer complaint dashboards and all sorts of things.

It helps our senior management in reviewing the performance of sales, production, and customer complaints and taking decisions accordingly. These are the areas for which we have designed custom warehouses. All the data is available on a daily basis. They can see the performance on a daily basis. They can look at the performance of the Sales site, pending dispatches, and inventory status. All these things are available in custom dashboards, which helps them in making decisions easily.

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.

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.

I have been using this solution for approximately seven years.

It is very stable. It is much stronger than any other solution that I've seen till now. I have heard that Microsoft's solution goes down, but Oracle is very stable.

Scalability is available. It depends on how you want to scale. Right now, we want to define our custom databases and custom warehouse. Therefore, we are creating customer data warehouses, and accordingly, we are designing our dashboards in a custom application. You can also connect it with any third-party software.

They are very good. We are on support right now, and they are providing support whenever we need it. They provide prompt support through their portal.

It is straightforward. Basically, if you look at the technical part of it, it is very simple. You can just follow a step-by-step process, and you can easily finish it.

It is reasonable, but it depends on how you're going to use it. There are no costs in addition to the standard licensing fees.

I would rate Oracle OBIEE an eight out of ten.

Primary use case, we use it for slicing and dicing service reporting. Our business is using Oracle BI to deliver business, marketing, and financial reports. Technology mainly does the modeling, and the business is creating the reports. We don't have any problems with the enterprise reporting.

It performs very well, because we are using Oracle Exadata. Oracle BI accesses Oracle Exadata, and it performs very well since Oracle Exadata has great performance. 

We have been using the Oracle stack for a long time. So, it was a natural choice to use Oracle BI.

The performance can issue queries to work in the Oracle database in Oracle's native language. There are a lot of visualizations which suit our business.

It shares quite a lot of features which suit us. For example, we have scheduled reports delivered automatically to our business users using enterprise features.

It is easy to create a report quickly. It does not take much time to create an ad hoc report.

Now, we have more demands to load data somewhere quickly, not seeped into a model, like data warehouse model. We need to load it somewhere like a data lake and have a tool which can analyze the information very quickly without creating a model. So, our business has a need to have a sandbox, or something similar to it analyze unstructured data that does not fit into the data warehouse model, along with joining unstructured data with structured data from the data warehouse. However, I am not sure that the BI tool is the right tool to do this, it is more of a data discovery tool. 

With Oracle BI, we need technology to create the model, then the business uses this model to create reports. If they wanted to analyze data quickly which is not in the data warehouse model, then we cannot use Oracle BI for it, or it's not so suitable.

In the beginning, it was not so good. Now, with the version 11.7 and 12, we are satisfied and don't have any problems.

In the beginning, it was not so good. Now, with the version 11.7 and 12, we are satisfied and don't have any problems.

We used the technical support a few years ago. We were not satisfied with the support, because we could not obtain answers or solutions. The problems that we had were recognized as bugs, and they would say, "It will be fixed in the next releases," and it was fixed, but it took time. Basically, it was not a pleasant experience to work with My Oracle Support.

We had at our disposal updates, new features, and new releases, which was good. We downloaded and upgraded, but regarding the problems that we had, we were not satisfied. The last problem that we had was about four or five years ago, and we haven't had problems since.

We previously didn't have a BI solution.

We first used Oracle 10, then Oracle 11, and afterwards moving to 11.3 until we got to Oracle 12. The initial setup was not complex. Although, in the past, when we had to upgrade, we had to install another version, and move the reporting to it. Now, we can do an in-place update. So, it is not so complicated.

We had more than one quotation, then we chose the product based on a type of questionnaire with scoring. I think Oracle made the high score at that time (2010). It was between Oracle and Cognos at that time.

There are now tools like Tableau or Power BI that enable you to do BI analysis without any model in the background. You can just connect to the database, or any other unstructured data source and do whatever you like, probably with more fancy visualizations. Although I'm a technical person, these things are more important to our business people. 

Oracle is an Enterprise BI tool. You have to do the modeling based on that model, then you can do whatever you like. However, it's not easy. It's not so flexible to do BI reporting directly from the data source without models. It is not that agile.

It's a very good tool for plain Enterprise BI reporting and usual BI reporting. It's not a tool for data discovery. If you want to do old-fashioned plain BI reporting and have a large company where you want your business users to have the possibility to have reports delivered to them automatically, then Oracle BI is a good tool. If you want to be more agile and do more data discovery on unstructured data which is not well-known, then Oracle BI would not be the best choice.

It's the connectors, the adapters. Built in connectors with different ERPs, you can plug in XL, other sources of data. It's very easy to configure. It's very easy to use.

It's so easy for us to see everything on a single dashboard, instead of looking for the information, and then compiling it in some sort of spreadsheet. We can just go on the dashboard and measure our success while looking at our financial data, even our HR data. 

It's great. We are able to do a lot of analytics. We can set goals, annual goals, using this tool. It's very easy to create our dimensions and our facts and see which metrics are being hit and which are not.

I think Oracle has already come up with a couple of data visualization pieces, instead of just reporting. Today, I saw from a couple of versions of what they are coming out with. I think it's pretty cool. I think it satisfies all the business needs that we have.

Super stable. In the initial phase, 10 years back when we started using it, at that point, it was a bit finicky, but it's been perfect.

I think it was scalable enough.

I think, especially with Oracle OBIEE, we have not created any service requests that I know of. Maybe once or twice. 

We have used their ERP as well and we had to create a lot of service requests, tickets. But with OBIEE, it's very easy to use, and we have not had that much trouble. The tool has been in the market for a while, it's very stable.

We were trying to use a custom based tool. That didn't work. Every time we had to make a minor change, a technical person had to be involved. A lot of different layers, and it was like product delivery. It was a continuous development. This was a big change for us. It was pretty much plug and play.

We needed some technical expertise, including me - I have some background in using different business value tools - so I knew. It was not that hard after reading their documentation. It was easy.

The most important criterion when looking at vendors is their experience with bigger clients. That helps a lot. Lessons learned, they put it out there. They tell in their white papers. There's a lot of information out there to help you before you even decide to use a tool. That's great.

It satisfies 99% of the business measures related to analytics, reporting, and dashboard views; it satisfies all of those.

I would say first, analyze your business requirements and see if this is the right tool for you. There might be cheaper options, looking at your business requirements. Oracle is a big company. That's the most important piece of the puzzle, you have to look at your own requirements and see if everything meets your needs. Other than that, I think if your requirements are to have a tool which has dashboard capabilities, and you have analytical needs, and reporting needs, I think this satisfies pretty well.

The most valuable features are what you can do with it. It's the insight of the data that really gives the management the capability of looking beyond what they probably currently have within the transaction system.

Now with 12c, there’s also data mash-up, which gives them the capability to look at different data, join them on the fly and look at the key indicators, which can probably give them insight into the business.

Performance is a key point, but it's always a give and take with performance: What do you really want to achieve versus what you can really get, and what does that cost? That's the key, I think, from a performance perspective.

I have been using it for 10 years.

It is a stable solution. We have been using it since it was Siebel; since before Oracle acquired Siebel. It has been almost 15-16 years. It's pretty old. Now, with the new release, they're adding on more and more capabilities.

It's pretty scalable. You can scale it differently; you can scale it horizontally or vertically. With the new upgrades, it's pretty amazing the things that you can do with it.

Technical support are very knowledgeable because this product has matured a lot from where it was initially.

With every release, the setup is getting easier and easier. When we started out, it was more complex; now it's getting more and more easy.

Based on what I have seen, based on different implementations, it's one of the tools that is pretty reliable in the market, that is pretty stable. As long as it meets your requirements, you should be fine. I don't see any issues with it.

When I’m deciding to work with a vendor like Oracle, I think about how much they are willing to collaborate and make their product succeed. It's more about partnership; it's more about reliability, but it's also about dependency. You often get stuck with products you're implementing and the solution might not be available onboard, so you have to go and reach out and get the solution.

I use this BI solution for ad-hoc and complex reports for finance and HR.

The main features of this solution are that it is easy to use, intuitive, and user-friendly. When I retrieve the data from the database it is in a very raw form, then when I use the Oracle Report Builder it has advanced intelligence features to allow me to view and make changes to the data easily.

There could be better integration with other solutions, such as Microsoft Office.

I have been using this solution for approximately six years.

The solution is 100% reliable and stable.

The solution is scalable. I have extended many areas in the reports and in other areas of the tool. My colleague was doing a project report in which he had to make some divisions and multiplications, similar to analytical functions. However, he was not able to do it in the SQL language. He gave me to try it in this BI tool solution and we achieved accurate results.

I have not found any issue to contact the support about.

The solution was easy to deploy and install. However, I have used the solution for a very long time and I am familiar with the technology, this could be why it was extremely easy for me to install and configure but might not be for others.

I would recommend this solution.

I rate Oracle OBIEE a ten out of ten.

It's one of the common integrated recording tools. I have been in the OBIEE world for quite some time. It's another powerful tool with certain aspects that are like no other tool. Three categorization layers gives us a lot of flexibility, which I didn't realize was possible on other reporting tools.

Prior to this, I was on the ETL side and slowly transferred to the reporting layer side and OBIEE was another good planning factor for me on that.

I would say the biggest need for us is non-structured data. Most of the time, our users come up with an Excel file they want to integrate. It's pretty much impossible in OBIEE. I'll put it that way. When it comes to the BI world, maybe you can do that in SAP Business Objects, and as a company, we have OBIEE and Business Objects as parallel tools people use.

That is always one of the things that we always lag behind and maybe people think Excel, but that is not one of the most powerful things businesses use. If you cannot satisfy the Excel needs, it doesn't matter how cool or how technically focused, consistent, compliant data you have; you can't use that if you can’t integrate it.

There are a few things, like variables and other stuff. Maybe they could allow the editing of reports. Those are the basic features. You cannot copy and paste a report, a particular section, which a lot of people said to us that they have to go through.

A focus on the user experience is what OBIEE needs. As a technical guy, I understand why it works and why, but if it doesn’t sell the business? Make it more user friendly. I'll put it that way.

I rate a product based on how it allows me to help the organization and my role is to provide reports. Success comes only when my customer accepts it. Right now, it's unidirectional and the other piece; there are some things, which are a pushback. It could be a lot of factors, not specifically OBIEE, but OBIEE plays a major role.

Most of the time, we have issues we are facing.

I have used Oracle OBIEE for the last 3 years.

It is a stable product. It has it's own life cycle and as the near future comes, it takes its own time, but once it gets stabilized, we're pretty much good.

We are using it to a good amount of extent, but I believe it's scalable. There is some kind of heaviness to the application. If it can be compartmentalized, then they will have it really good. Right now, they are trying to scale it to an extent we could do, but it comes with some kind of administrative work from our side.

Technical support is okay. I will put it that way. We had our own ups and downs. As a company, from our side, we are platinum customers to Oracle. I don't want to go through the regular route of technical support. We know what we are asking. I'm not that new at this. I don't want to go through a 10-step process to reach somebody, because we work with them to correct some of their product issues.

Apart from that, we get assistance. I won't say we don't get it, but we also had a structured model to interact with Oracle and that they are getting better at that. I came to know that in 12c. They are making it easy for us to give our issues to them. They have the ability that we can click on a case and give them whatever they need. Hopefully, that should solve our problem with Oracle.

When I came in, there was a framework already existing. I was more stabilizing the issues, and this is what my knowledge is about. Setup was not straightforward. There are a lot of things that my friend was initially doing and was going through. I came and then helped them and stabilized it more; not specific to the OBIEE, but from the OBIEE stack. Those are some things that need to be improved.

The client required the ability to produce the same reports that they currently produce in Excel (replicating as close as possible to the format as the users were used to this), but distributed via a dashboard/mobile front-end rather than relying on emailing Excel files.

For them, the most important features were the ability to build complex and highly formatted analytic reports, to publish them on dashboards, to build mobile apps to allow access whilst out and about, but still be able to email reports out for those users who still wanted them that way. Including the report in the body of the email to avoid having to open attachments was also desired.

The ability to directly access data in their warehouse rather than downloading into an Excel file was also an important consideration. This is a small company, but growing fast and the amount of data was becoming unwieldy in Excel and would just get worse.

These reports are used all day by the company’s sales representatives as they travel between regional outlets, customers and suppliers. Having access to this data quickly via a tablet/mobile phone meant spending less time at a desk and could ensure that they have up-to-date information during their meetings. It has therefore greatly increased the time the sales reps can spend out on the road and positively impacted on the deals they are making. Their managers can also monitor during the day what the sales reps are up to and provide better guidance.

The IT developers for this client have struggled in two areas, setting up the repository and fine tuning the report formatting.

The repository in OBIEE provides a huge capability for bringing in table structures from a database, linking them together, mapping hierarchies, adding custom calculations and so on. However, to do much of the complex mapping they needed is very difficult without considerable experience. There is very little within the repository administration tool to guide you on how to achieve complex tasks and the documentation is quite brief. Improvements in this area would certainly help.

For the reports, the requirement was to replicate highly formatted reports in Excel and despite the cell-level formatting in Excel that obviously cannot be replicated within a reporting tool, we’ve gotten extremely close. However, as with the repository, experience has been key – the analytic report-building screen provides a wide range of functionality, but without someone with experience on hand to provide ‘tricks of the trade’, they would have struggled. Simplifying the interface to provide easier access to all of the functions would help greatly here.

For this client, it was their first foray into professional business intelligence reporting products. Until now, they’ve merely been using Excel for all of their reporting needs.

There were some issues in the first few weeks with the services crashing with little or no meaningful messages in the log files, but these seemed to clear up and no issues have been encountered since. They have been put down to the developers being a little over enthusiastic with what they were trying as they were learning the product. Now they know what they are doing, all is ok.

This has not been an issue so far for this client, they are still in the early days of building their BI estate.

No technical support has been requested so far from the vendor.

Excel was the original solution. As the company was young and the quantity of data still relatively small, Excel was the obvious, easy and cheap choice. The growth of the company has now reached the point where the use of Excel is becoming problematic – the quantity of data needed to be downloaded, the size of the Excel file, maintenance of the VBA/Macro code in the sheets and access to the files by users out on the road were all issues that needed to be addressed.

The initial installation and configuration was relatively straightforward. Installing the software is a little complex for someone doing it for the first time; there are quite a few steps, but it was just a case of slowly working through them.

The big boon for this client was that they already had a data warehouse containing the data required for reporting; it was currently being assembled by an overnight process and then manually downloaded into Excel. OBIEE was able to directly connect to this warehouse and access the table/view objects within. The client was quickly able to start producing some of the simpler reports.

For this client, the licensing requirements where initially quite simple; they knew how many users they intended to provide the reports to, so they only purchased the licenses for them. The long-term intention is to incorporate more reports and, hence, service more users within the company, but they know they can extend the licenses as and when required. In this scenario the advice is quite simple – start small and grow as you need to; there is no point buying enterprise-wide licenses until you need to.

The client was already an Oracle database user, so Oracle’s Business Intelligence product was the obvious first port of call when looking for a better reporting solution. I do not know how seriously they looked at other products.

For a company just starting out in the world of BI reporting, this product, along with most other BI reporting products, is an expensive tool to buy, if you just want to play around and see what BI can do. It contains so many features, you can easily get caught up trying them all out and never actually deliver anything meaningful.

To get the most out of the product, you need to know what it is you are trying to achieve – what reports you want to produce, where the data comes from, how you want to provide those reports to the users. You can then quickly start to deliver benefit from the product just using the features you actually need. Later on, you can start looking at additional features to see what else it can do for you.

The product has a huge range of features as well as script/API interfaces to plug in others. However, many of the features are a little too complex to simply use ‘out of the box’. It is a product that Oracle are constantly developing and each release is better than the last, but each release also adds more features that make it even more complex. It is a comprehensive reporting solution, not a simple reporting solution!