What needs improvement with Oracle OBIEE?

The tool's downside is that it is very expensive, making it an area where improvements are needed.

I would rate its current performance as a five out of ten because a lot of features are missed out in OBIEE. Nowadays, many smaller tools in the market have more features. For example, in OBIEE, if you have more than three million records in a report, they are not visible in the report itself. Secondly, you cannot export more than one million records. These feature-based problems affect many clients in Vietnam, Brazil, Sandel, and India. Indian clients choose alternative tools alongside OBIEE. So, they can improve the performance and add some new features. It's a good product otherwise.

Oracle OBIEE is lagging in data visualization. In the form of Data Visualization Desktop (DVD), it has achieved some things, but other visualizing tools like Tableau and Power BI are somewhat ahead. However, Oracle is catching up. Data Visualization is one initiative that is closing the gap, but there's still a need for improvement. Data visualization is the only area I can see right now that needs realignment.

In terms of improvement, I would like to see enhancements in tracking, debugging, and flexibility. Additionally, features like exposing apps as services and generating PowerPoint presentations directly from reports could be beneficial. While OBIEE offers similar features to Power BI, there may be some functions that haven't been explored fully due to a lack of knowledge or ease of access compared to Power BI.

The platform's interface needs improvement.

The pricing of the solution should be bettered.

The installation process and the ability to resume customer reports could be improved. The functionality to customize and modify reports has been removed, and it would be beneficial to reinstall it, as it allows greater customization and flexibility in creating reports.

Oracle OBIEE is a product that is not easy to implement. The product is also not easy to use. The aforementioned details about the solution can be considered for improvement.

Oracle OBIEEE's performance and licensing costs could be improved.

I think the schedule option where we schedule the dashboards has to be improved. When we have to send the dashboard to the ADS personnel based on some conditions, then it is not feasible to add those conditions and send it to different email addresses. Suppose a person does not have access to Sales Cloud, but the business wants emails to be triggered. Then we have to put in static emails while scheduling the reports or documents. We do not have any conditions where we can, from the existing fields, add some conditions, like the ones based on certain conditions regarding a person and then based on some other conditions regarding another person. So that's where I think I have faced backlogs personally. Though Oracle did support us, the resolution wasn't quick. Oracle can improve its support.

Training is needed to be provided to Oracle OBIEE's potential users since it is a complicated tool. The potential users of Oracle OBIEE need to possess some IT awareness to be able to operate it. The drawback with the tool is that though it is well-created, its users are under-trained to use it. Since Oracle OBIEE is an on-premise solution, I face many limitations, and this is also one of the issues that Oracle needs to address in the future. Moving to the cloud is a decision that would make the solution much more efficient than it is currently.

The documentation in Oracle OBIEE can be more user-friendly. Oracle should include more videos rather than simple text. Also, adding some examples will help users with quick learning.

An area for improvement is that Oracle pushes more users to Oracle BI Publisher rather than emphasizing Oracle OBIEE for reporting. Oracle is promoting Oracle BI Publisher as a reporting solution while introducing Oracle OBIEE into the ERP side. In terms of data warehousing and getting on-premises reports, you need to use the Oracle Analytics Server, for example, to fetch the data rather than doing it on Oracle OBIEE, which is another area for improvement. Oracle has more control over the data grid on the cloud versus Oracle OBIEE deployed on-premises, which is a drawback because deploying on the cloud gives you less flexibility in terms of customizations, adding dimensions, etc. The pricing for Oracle OBIEE could be improved.

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

When they converted to OAC, they made some changes that were good and some that were not so good. In terms of room for improvement, there is nothing that's perfect. One of the things that have been difficult with OBIEE during all the time that I've known it is that when something goes wrong, many times, the error messages are not specific, and you've got to spend a lot of time digging and digging and digging before you say, "Oh, okay. I figured out what it was." There should be more detailed error messages or troubleshooting messages.

Oracle OBIEE can improve the ease of use. It is a lot to learn and it could be made easier.

Oracle OBIEE could improve the visualizations, such as diagrams, charts, and graphical user interface. Other tools on the market have better graphical visualizations this Oracle OBIEE.

Rigidity and speed are areas that could be improved. Everything has to move quickly in today's world, especially in the data world. Everyone wants it right now. Having a system is great, and when you code it correctly, it can get the job done. However, a modern solution takes a long time; it moves much slower than some other things. You have products such as Tableau, and there are other data science tools out there churning through just as much data. Obviously, that element is not intended to be a data science tool in and of itself. It's more of a reporting tool than anything else. Expanding beyond pure data reporting and into analytics, or expanding data science, would be areas for improvement.

This solution needs a better security management system and I think there is room for improvement in terms of giving access to people in a more effective way. I'd like to see additional features and performance can be improved too.

There are a lot of aspects of Oracle OBIEE that are exceptionally complicated, make things unnecessarily difficult for everyone who uses it. In terms of the integrations, Oracle needs to improve a little more, but I believe that they have tried to capture all those issues. The issues we are facing in the Oracle OBIEE 12C versions, in the Oracle Analytical Server Center or Analytical Cloud versions, Oracle has managed to overcome the challenges. Oracle OBIEE could improve its marketing. There is no additional training, trials, or something else needed. Oracle has Business partners, such as TCS and Cognizant. All the business partners for Oracle, I never saw that they ever tried to market the Oracle tools for visualization. We can do visualization of data with it, large analytical data, and analytical analysis. They never try to market it in that way. All I understood as it is a tool for extracting large amounts of data. They need to improve on their outreach.

We do like Oracle Visual Analyzer, but we do feel that it's quite immature in comparison to its competitors. There is still quite a lot of catch-up to be done, but it does still have some unique value add. It is not very stable, and it is not consistently improved. There are a lot of gaps when it comes to design. The documentation and support from Oracle on the vision have been pretty bad over the last six years. It is very biased towards Oracle infrastructure. One of the major red flags we have at the moment against Oracle is that it doesn't support deployment on other cloud providers. We're quite heavily vested in AWS as our infrastructure, and Oracle is yet to formally support deploying on those virtual infrastructure instances. That's quite disappointing, and it also cuts them out of over 70% of the market. Its deployment is complicated in comparison to other solutions.

Warehouse and business intelligence are two different things, but OBIEE also has some warehouse features in it. I would like to see some of those capabilities improved.

I would like to see Machine Learning included in this solution.

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.

Managing the OB applications requires a high level of experience, and in that sense, the solution is quite heavy. Although the solution offers some direct reporting, I'd like to see something on the database. The way things are now you need to go through an intermediate layer rather than connecting directly to the database which would enable you to immediately start building a report.

The graphical capabilities could be better. They are also cumbersome, and they are limited compared to Tableau, Power BI, or even Business Objects to a certain extent and Cognos. The error logging isn't great either. The errors that come out when you schedule aren't easy to understand. I find how they filter within a query quite cumbersome and difficult to debug if somebody else has done it. You can see as you build, and I think that's where the problem is. It doesn't lend itself to debug something. For example, if you create a formula that's quite complicated, it's not easy to understand what goes with what. It becomes spaghetti, and it's very difficult to unpick. That's really my gripe about it, and in some ways, it's too flexible. It tries to be a Jack of all trades when it's not. I think a lot of these products, if they concentrate on trying to produce your reports, then that's fine. But when they're trying to do all sorts of other things as well, then it isn't very easy. We get lots of support from Oracle, but I think the problem is that we get many invalid file operations. Nobody understands why. It can be a multitude of reasons, but no one reason could cause it. That's just one of the issues we've had in the last year. But the scope of reporting has gone through the roof over the previous 12 to 18 months. We want an end-of-life OBIEE in our environment because some of the infrastructure runs unclustered. We weren't allowed to go clustered for some reason, and we never knew why. Unfortunately, going down that route means that the platform we run it on, WebLogic, has now become non-standard within our organization. Everything's been moved off it and onto other platforms. Unfortunately, our OBIEE runs on that platform, and we're being pushed down different routes, and we don't know where we're going at the moment. Within the next two years, I don't think we'll have OBIEE in our part of the business. In the next release, I think having the capability of being able to develop and then promote to a production environment rather than having to have separate environments will help. I know that Tableau and Power BI can be created on a desktop application, and then when it's ready to go live, you can promote it.

I find I prefer Oracle OAC over OBIEE. It's more advanced, has artificial intelligence, and there's more that we can do with it in general. OBIEE is lacking features. The reporting could be better. We can only develop standard PDF reports. We don't have reports that show analytics. It doesn't generate barcodes at the top and it doesn't have the ability to show notes. The reporting system needs to introduce logic so that we can make the reporting more flexible. Writing any code takes a long time. Merging data is also a long and tedious process.

The performance could improve and in a future release, they could provide more virtualization options.

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

If I want to develop a new repository, any new table, any new schema that I want to incorporate into the RPD, then in my local schema, can't directly connect to the cloud. I do not have complete end-to-end access to it. In such cases, I need to install some local DV. I don't know if that is the right path or not, however, as far as I'm concerned, I'm just creating some tables, some sample space in my local DB and from the DB I just try to import into my local RPD in order to publish to the cloud. It is double work. If I'm in a non-cloud environment and I need not connect to the local DB, I need not re-import everything into my local space. I can connect to the available on-premise DB and connecting to that on-premise DB I can create the RPD. In terms of linking to the cloud, there are many restrictions. From a business standpoint, it is a great way to approach things. That said, from a developer's standpoint, it's a bit tough to develop the code and progress the code to the next environment like that. There's a lot of redundancy, especially in relation to creating the code. Developers, in fact, have to deal with many hurdles, including security restrictions and vendor communications.

It is complex for designing RPD, and it can be simpler. Their support can also be improved in terms of response time.

It should have more self-service capabilities.

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 would like to see the data wrangling features enhanced. This product is not easy to use and there is a steep learning curve.

The complexity of this product means that you need to have a technical team to develop the reports, although this is also true for products like Microsoft BI and Zoho. Performance-wise, there may be some room for improvement.

Migration on premisses should be easier (but is easier if you migrate to the cloud). More self-services should be available for the users.

There are pages about its limitations in Gartner documents. My understanding is they are working to improve themselves. There aren't any really big issues and they're already in the cloud, therefore, largely there isn't too much that's lacking. The pricing model could be improved. Right now, it's quite confusing. Many customers have this feeling that it's a super-expensive option. Currently, the solution is based on three pillars. The first is the BI publisher and it used to be a single product. The second is Oracle and Oracle Business Intelligence, the core component. It used to be a CBO product. Then, thirdly, you have this new Oracle visual analyzer. Now, all of these are wrapped into one Oracle analytics product. However, the integration between (or among) these three products is not 100% complete. This is the area where improvements can be made.

Even though we have a feature to enable the physical query to be seen in the log, in case of any issues, it is challenging to debug and see or identify where is the issue. For example, we designed the OBIEE repository and deployed it into the server, and we are now accessing and creating a report. For some reason, if the report is not working as expected, it is very difficult to identify the issue. We have a feature to see the physical query that is being generated in the central OBIEE server. I feel that this feature should have been available at the repository level so that while designing the repository, we can select the presentation columns and the query it is going to create. This will avoid the additional task of deploying a feature into the server and then testing the report. It will also make the implementation process friendly if, while designing the repository, we can see: * How is a feature working? * Are any of the presentation columns selected? * How is the query being generated? * Which query is being generated? * Are any joints used? * What kind of joints are used? Having this kind of information will make Oracle OBIEE more powerful and developer-friendly.

In the 11G model, there are restricted visualizations, whereas in Oracle Analytics Cloud we have multiple different variations of visualization. If there was a way of presenting the data in a pictorial way, it would be very helpful. Right now, the solution, at least in that deployment model, is lacking a number of visualizations. The solution needs to be easier to scale.

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.

Thanks, Ms. Julia Frohwein for the review. I would like to explain the points which I had written in the first post. The solution is too expensive for small firms. The solution is too expensive for small firms due to their licensing cost. Not every company has the budget to purchase the solution. I believe that the solution is beginning to integrate more security measures, however, more must be done. The on-premises version does not have any AI or machine learning capabilities. They're saving those for cloud versions.

One significant improvement is the need for simplification. The set up could be more intuitive. An enterprise setup with HA and DR are pretty complex and to get a robust solution one has to play around with Real Application Cluster data sources and FAN notifications as well as WebLogic clustering and external load balancers. SSO also is not that simple to set up especially if you want all your Oracle systems to use the same SSO solution, i.e., no cheating with direct LDAP connectivity. So there is no simple setup for HA deployment. you need to manually create a cluster deploy into the cluster , reconfigure the datasources to high availability data sources etc. Unlike hyperion for example which has automated configurator scripts that do a lot of the under covers work for the administrator and hence simplifies the ha installation.

* Visualization of OBIEE needs a boost. * The data mashup functionality and ease of use for end users also need to be improved a lot.

They should develop greater visualization because their visualization isn't industry leading at the moment. The way you pull the data and see the data compared to other platforms, they're lagging a little bit behind. Also, their cost. I've got Oracle account managers trying to persuade me every day to purchase these licenses. Once you purchase OBIEE, then you have to purchase the virtualization and then you have to purchase the mobile license to operate on the mobile. It's really expensive.

The functionality is in need of improvement. We find the graphs need to be upgraded.

I think there is a lot of room for improvement. This solution is weak in the data science perspective. I have past data science experience. And, I find that there is a lot of room for improvement in terms of incorporating more advanced statistical modeling into the product. I come from a data science background. I find that there is a lot of room for improvement to incorporate more advanced statistical modeling into the product.

It is not a good product for data visualization. And, its functionality is lacking.

Metadata management function: Sometimes, our business requirements need to load reference data into the data model.

I would like more graphical charts. While it is a user-friendly, data-driven tool, the data modeling should be easier to use.

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.

One feature I would definitely like to see is the ability to provide the in-memory data. Oracle might have some plugins but, as of now, that feature isn't available out-of-the-box. You might have to purchase that feature. This is the feature that is most lacking, which we would like to have in the next release. Also, the overall architecture. Currently, it comes in an Oracle suite. We want to have it come as a separate product and which is very easy to install, migrate, deploy etc.

From the point of view of strategic management, I would like to have a feature, perhaps a form after we get to the KPI dashboard, to be used to note if something unusual happens in the operations. That way we could record extreme KPI situations, and track why a number is very low or too high.

The WebLogic administration could be more intuitive or simplified especially when you are focused on OBIEE

It needs better parent-child dimension options that don't need to pass through OBIEE to build it. It's an easier way to update the model in case of a change of dimension size or sources. Also, it needs better and more dynamic graphics. There are a lot of tools with better graphics and big part of BI is about this.

I think there are some issues to be solved, and it needs some visual improvements, especially on the charts, but it is still the best solution in my opinion.