Active Query Builder vs. IBM Cognos Analytics

This is a good framework to use if your project requires frequent database queries. The product is made for both complete amateurs and seasoned experts. Prompt, courteous, and expert assistance; any problems are addressed and fixed without delay. Relatively inexpensive Inadequate, if there are new people involved, delays due to a lack of documentation are likely, and issues with code completion may arise.

Incentivized

Reporting whose demands are not too high but simple tabulated format which can be used for over several years. Also adhoc reporting using Query Studio is better in making short time reports. Other options where it lacks is Dashboarding where I would prefer Tableau or PowerBI

Incentivized

• Pull data from SQL even if you do not know SQL.
• Provides clear database information.
• Works with multiple databases at once.
• Data access and security.

Incentivized

• Common metadata platform that enables reporting, dashboards, ad hoc access and advanced capabilities
• integrates well with a broad range of databases, authentication providers
• provides content creation capabilities at different levels of complexity to make more people with a range of skills productive.

Incentivized

• Features are good but lacks documentation
• It would be great it were adaptive to Embarcadero/Dev Express Skins that would be very cool
• Modifying SQL code is difficult

Incentivized

• Data modules still can't match the flexibility of the framework manager. When dealing with large data models, or multi-grain, FM still wins.
• The new native graphs, while pretty, still can't match the version 10 graphs in terms of flexibility or options. It is possible to import third-party graphs, but it's a pain.
• Some functionality, like version control, is only available through third parties. Motio or BSP.

Incentivized

For an existing solution, renewing licenses does provide a good return on investment. Additionally, while rolling out scorecards and dashboards with little adhoc capabilities, to end users, cognos is very easily scalable. It also allows to create a solution that has a mix of OLAP and relational data-sources, which is a limitation with other tools. Synchronizing with existing security setup is easy too.

We have a strong user base (3500 users) that are highly utilizing this tool. Basic users are able to consume content within the applied security model. We have a set of advanced users that really push the limits of Cognos with Report and Query Studio. These users have created a lot of personal content and stored it in 'My Reports'. Users enjoy this flexibility.

Reports can typically be viewed through any browser that can access the server, so the availability is ultimately up to what the company utilizing it is comfortable with allowing, though report development tends to be more picky about browsers and settings as mentioned above. It also has an optional iPad app and general mobile browsing support, but dashboards lack the mobile compatibility. What keeps it from getting a higher score is the desktop tools that are vital to the development process. The compatibility with only Windows when the server has a wide range of compatibility can be a real sore point for a company that outfits its employees exclusively with Mac or Linux machines. Of course, if they are planning on outsourcing the development anyways, it's a rather moot point

Overall no major complaints but it doesn't handle DMR (Dimensionally Modeled for Relational) very well. DMR modelling is a capability that IBM Cognos Framework Manager provides allowing you to specify dimensional information for relational metadata and allows for OLAP-style queries. However, the capability is not very efficient and, for example, if I'm using only 2 columns on a 20-column model, the software is not smart enough to exclude 18 columns and the query side gets progressively larger and larger until it's effectively unusable.

Why is their web application not working as fast as you think it should? They never know, and it is always a a bunch of shots in the dark to find out. Trying to download software from them is like trying to find a book at the library before computers were invented.

Incentivized

Onsite training provided by IBM Cognos was effective and as expected. They did not perform training with our data which was a bit difficult for our end-users.

The online courses they offer are thorough and presented in such a way that someone who isn't already familiar with the general design methodologies used in this field will be capable of making a good design. The training environments are provided as a fully self contained virtual machine with everything needed already to create the environments. We've had some persisting issues with the environments becoming unavailable, but support has been responsive when these issues arise and straightening them out for us

Make sure that any custom tables that you have, are built into your metadata packages. You can still access them via SQL queries in Cognos, but it is much easier to have them as a part of the available metadata packages.

I have used Flutter to begin and with flutter you need learn a language called Dart which is not needed with AQB, which is the main reason for us to pick Active Query Builder as a choice over Flutter. AQB supports all the merchant SQL databases with native syntax support, query optimizations and more

Incentivized

We could deliver a corporate wide solution with Cognos, it is an end-to-end platform. No other option provided the same breadth of scope. I can't think of a feature that the others provide that Cognos lacks, but the others do not provide the same features and governance of data with user/data security in mind.

Incentivized

The Cognos architecture is well suited for scalability. However, the architecture must be designed with scalability in mind from day one of the implementation. We recently upgraded from 10.1 to 10.2.1 and took the opportunity to revamp our architecture. It is now poised for future growth and scalability.

• better business decisions allow us to maximize revenue for the company
• awesome ROI

Incentivized

• The team that implemented this software tells me that the ROI is not obtained instantly; it must go through long months before obtaining good results.
• There are functions that are not easy for all users; this makes it difficult to obtain positive results in the first months.
• A year has to pass before noticing that after its configuration, we can work without delays.

Incentivized