Coginiti vs. Microsoft BI (MSBI)

Aginity is able to track productivity which has been helping us be able to determine areas that need improvement. we have found agility very user-friendly in terms of ease of scalability. moreover, its ability to reuse SQL has saved us a lot of time because we do not have to re-code SQL.

Incentivized

Microsoft BI has a lot of features and is a very powerful tool, especially if you have folks on your team that know how to utilize all of its capabilities. To truly unlock all that it can do, it does require people to have a deep understanding of its capabilities. That's where the software really shines. If you are looking for a simpler, more basic reporting tool, there are other programs available that do not require such a steep learning curve.

Incentivized

• Query auto-completion
• Database exploration including schemas, tables, columns, distribution keys, sort keys, etc.
• Common scenario query samples, and easy access to table DDL
• Table size operational report
• Free community edition

Incentivized

• Comparatively easy to use compared to other data analytics solutions, collaborating with other colleagues on data work is simple.
• Using Visual Studio for database, ETL, reporting, and analytics development save time and money.
• Transfer of data from one application to another via Excel and comparison of data attributes between applications
• Dashboard functionality, as well as Python support, are available, allowing you to add additional charts and graphs.

Incentivized

• For one, I don't like how the parenthesis are automatically created as a set. Often times I only need to type one part of the parenthesis, but it creates a set of ( and ), forcing me to delete them because I didn't need the other half at where my cursor was. Same goes with any other sort of characters, such as ' '. I understand that it's suppose to be smart, but more often than not, it's causing more inconvenience and wasting more time, than actually saving time simply because it types an extra ) or ' for me.
• The error message and the log. I would think there probably is a log somewhere, but the fact that I've been using Aginity for close to a year now, and I still haven't found something similar to a log, is saying something about this feature. A log is like a standard thing nowadays, for running codes, to check against what has happened with the code, and for debugging what you have done wrong within the code. It also contains error messages, and help you troubleshoot with a clearer picture. The error message display current is very small and hard to read, sometimes the error message itself is not as easy to understand either. I use SAS on a daily basis as well, I feel like SAS has done a way better job on this issue, than Aginity.

Incentivized

• MSBI designs can work on increasing data processing capabilities enough to handle the huge datasets etc.
• It would be a lot better if it is a little low on cost.
• it needs to create opportunities little more than they do regarding customization of some very unique visualization effects

Microsoft BI is fundamental to our suite of BI applications. That being said, Northcraft Analytics is focused on delighting our customers, so if the underlying factors of our decision change, we would choose to re-write our BI applications on a different stack. Luckily, mathematics are the fundamental IP of our technology... and is portable across all BI platforms for the foreseeable future.

The Microsoft BI tools have great usability for both developers and end users alike. For developers familiar with Visual Studio, there is little learning curve. For those not, the single Visual Studio IDE means not having to learn separate tools for each component. For end-users, the web interface for SSRS is simple to navigate with intuitive controls. For ad-hoc analysis, Excel can connect directly to SSAS and provide a pivot table like experience which is familiar to many users. For database development, there is beginning to be some confusion, as there are now three tool choices (VS, SSMS, Azure Data Studio) for developers. I would like to see Azure Data Studio become the superset of SSMS and eventually supplant it.

Incentivized

The product has been reliable.

SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) can drag at times. We created two report servers and placed them under an F5 load balancer. This configuration has worked well. We have seen sluggish performance at times due to the Windows Firewall.

MSBI natively has a site that allows you to vote on user enhancements and bug fixes. This allows the largest nagging issues to float to the top and the development team can prioritize accordingly. As mentioned earlier, the large community base of MSBI developers assist technical resources in handling technical questions.

Incentivized

This training was more directed toward what the product was capable of rather than actual programming.

I have used on-line training from Microsoft and from Pragmatic Works. I would recommend Pragmatic Works as the best way to get up to speed quickly, and then use the Microsoft on-line training to deep dive into specific features that you need to get depth with.

We are a consulting firm and as such our best resources are always billing on client projects. Our internal implementation has weaknesses, but that's true for any company like ours. My rating is based on the product's ease of implementation.

Aginity offers the best tools for data research, which are easy to use and customize. Unlike Aginity, AdvancedMiner wasn't only hard to deploy but also was highly-priced.

Incentivized

We have used the built in ConnectWise Manager reports and custom reports. The reports provide static data. PowerBI shows us live data we can drill down into and easily adjust parameters. It's much more useful than a static PDF report.

Incentivized

• The tool helped us to implement all Supply Chain and Retail data into the DWH
• The tool allowed us to control ETL and reporting access, monitor them, and prioritize user's access
• If you do not use the tool in the correct way, the risk is to delete some business information

Incentivized

• As a SaaS provider we see being able to provide self-service BI to our client users as a competitive advantage. In fact the MSSQL enabled BI is a contributing factor to many winning RFPs we have done for prospective client organisations.
• However MSSQL BI requires extensive knowledge and skills to design and develop data warehouses & data models as a foundation to support business analysts and users to interrogate data effectively and efficiently. Often times we find having strong in-house MSSQL expertise is a bless.

Incentivized