Db2 vs. Jaspersoft

I have primarily used it as the basis for a SIS - but I have migrated more than a few systems from there database systems to DB2 (Filemaker, MySQL, etc.). DB2 does have a better structural approach, as opposed to Filemaker, which allows for more data consistency, but this can also lead to an inflexibility that can sometimes be counterintuitive when attempting to compensate for the flexibility of the work environment as Schools tend to have an all in one approach.

Incentivized

It is well suited for the fact of scalability itself and the breadth of features this application has in order to make the migration from legacy systems to the newer different versions more seamless and effective. Data integrity and security are the main aspects of this tool which does not lose their value when doing day-to-day operations for data mapping.

Incentivized

• While we query a large set of data, the results are generally available within a minute or so.
• Always reliable - I have never experienced an application going down.
• It is easy to write queries and find tables and columns.
• We can log in smoothly without any headaches.

Incentivized

• TIBCO Jaspersoft allows you to embed reports into your own application, which gives users the feeling they are using a single product.
• TIBCO Jaspersoft Studio allows for more advanced report development, such as adding subreports, drilldown to detail reports, images, page headers, page footers, maps, and more.
• TIBCO's Jaspersoft Domain Designer is very easy to use and navigate.

Incentivized

• Learning curve for DB resources - Improvements to UI or native command line built-ins can help with increasing efficiencies for DB resources
• Better resource utilization monitoring and recommendations
• Continue to adopt support for modern frameworks and languages making it easier for organizations to see making Db2 the easy first choice

Incentivized

• One of the issues we found during our implementation was that the reporting software would work faster for certain data sources and not the others. Extracting CSVs and XML was slower in comparison to JSON in our experience.
• Jaspersoft Studio was the main IDE we used for development. Built atop the Eclipse IDE, we found that the tool was really resource intensive and generally take long time to initialize.

Incentivized

The DB2 database is a solid option for our school. We have been on this journey now for 3-4 years so we are still adapting to what it can do. We will renew our use of DB2 because we don’t see. Major need to change. Also, changing a main database in a school environment is a major project, so we’ll avoid that if possible.

Incentivized

JasperSoft has been amazing. It is well documented, fast, and transparent in how it functions. We have been very confident in JasperSoft in every aspect of our business and offerings where we've used it. On top of that, their improvements to the product have been fantastic. I am really looking forward to seeing where they take their product and how we can leverage that to please our clients

Incentivized

You have to be well versed in using the technology, not only from a GUI interface but from a command line interface to successfully use this software to its fullest.

Incentivized

I think it's a tool well suited for a software developer. Others with less coding skills could struggle somewhat with the tool. I find java a little unforgiving as a language for expressions and not very user friendly for the technically dis-inclined. Sometimes the numeric conversions cause issues (who knew that 0 and 0.0 would cause different things to happen). Previous experience with a reporting tool that used visual basic for its' expressions that I found much simpler to use. On the other hand, java is so widespread, you can easily google the syntax to accomplish what you need to do.

Incentivized

I have never had DB2 go down unexpectedly. It just works solidly every day. When I look at the logs, sometimes DB2 has figured out there was a need to build an index. Instead of waiting for me to do it, the database automatically created the index for me. At my current company, we have had zero issues for the past 8 years. We have upgrade the server 3 times and upgraded the OS each time and the only thing we saw was that DB2 got better and faster. It is simply amazing.

Incentivized

We've never had an outage of the software itself. If it was unavailable, it was due to a network outage, not a problem with Jasper.

Incentivized

The performances are exceptional if you take care to maintain the database. It is a very powerful tool and at the same time very easy to use. In our installation, we expect a DB machine on the mainframe with access to the database through ODBC connectors directly from branch servers, with fabulous end users experience.

Incentivized

Complex reports on heavy data load may take considerable amount of time. We have experinced some latencies/misfires regarding to this.

Incentivized

Easily the best product support team. :) Whenever we have questions, they have answered those in a timely manner and we like how they go above and beyond to help.

Incentivized

They have a great customer support ticketing system in which they always respond same-day. They offer conference calls with srcreensharing as well in order to better understand your issues.

I wish that the lower level support access came with more than just 12 cases per year though as this makes us less likely to reach out for questions on things that we then instead try to solve ourselves which results in loss of time in trying to acquire new features and or solve a problem.

Incentivized

the material was very clear and all subjects have been handled

Incentivized

It did the job of getting us to our deadline we set for ourselves for initial launch. The customer we launched the product for was also there to learn about it at the same in order to better understand the capabilities. This helped greatly so that the customer was on the same page on what was possible when using jaspersoft. I think most people would not want their customers aware the product they are using is third-party but in this case it was a new experience for us both and so as we learned more about jaspersoft, we both had better communication on what the future road map was for their business needs in BI.

Incentivized

Resources available in the TIBCO Knowledge Base are covering almost everything. They are well organized, and covering almost every possibility. There is always the change to get back to the TIBCO support or to the dedicated Customer Success Manager whenever something very specific or bound to a customization is not covered.

Incentivized

db2 work well with the application, also the replication tool can keep it up

Having just completed an upgrade to the latest version of Jaspersoft, I am happy to say their support was very good. There were a couple of small challenges which were not easily resolved, but they were primarily related to the fact that we had skipped updates for a couple of versions. The current update procedures assumed we were upgrading from the prior latest version (6.4) to to the new version (7.1).

Incentivized

DB2 was more scalable and easily configurable than other products we evaluated and short listed in terms of functionality and pricing. IBM also had a good demo on premise and provided us a sandbox experience to test out and play with the product and DB2 at that time came out better than other similar products.

Incentivized

When looking at the different features of these reporting engines, and what we were going to be using it for, the answer seemed clear. Jasper offered exactly what we were looking for, and did so for a price that we were happy with. For a scalable, feature-rich reporting engine that doesn't break the bank, Jaspersoft is the way to go.

Incentivized

By
using DB2 only to support my IzPCA activities, my knowledge here
is somewhat limited.

Anyway,
from what I was able to understand, DB2 is extremely scallable.

Maybe the information below could serve as an example of scalability.

Customer have an huge mainframe environment, 13x z15 CECs, around
80 LPARs, and maybe more than 50 Sysplexes (I am not totally sure about this
last figure...)

Today
we have 7 IzPCA
databases, each one in a distinct Syplex.

Plans
are underway to have, at the end, an small LPAR, with only one DB2 sub-system,
and with only one database, then transmit the data from a lot of other LPARs,
and then process all the data in this only one database.

The
IzPCA collect process (read the data received, manipulate it, and insert rows
in the tables) today is a huge process, demanding many elapsed
hours, and lots of CPU.

Almost
100% of the tables are PBR type, insert jobs run in parallel, but in 4 of the 7
database, it is a really a huge and long process.

Combining
the INSERTs loads from the 7 databases in only one will be impossible.......,,,,

But,
IzPCA recently introduced a new feature, called "Continuous
Collector".

By
using that feature, small amounts of data will be transmited to the central
LPAR at every 5 minutes (or even less), processed immediately,in
a short period of time, and with small use of CPU,
instead of one or two transmissions by day, of very large amounts of data and
the corresponding collect jobs occurring only once or twice a day, with long
elapsed times, and huge comsumption of CPU

I
suspect the total CPU seconds consumed will be more or less the same in
both cases, but in the new method it will occur in small bursts
many times a day!!

Incentivized

We haven't really started to explore the scalability of the product as yet, but in terms of existing deployments it has done what we need it to do.

Incentivized

• Negative: Difficult and manual deployment
• Negative: Missing assistants from common monitoring metrics
• Positive: Stability
• Positive: Performance
• Positive: Resiliency and high availability (HADR)
• Positive: Data Replication (Q-Rep)
• Positive: Interaction with storage subsystems for backups (TSM, SVC)
• Positive: Gigantic monitoring features in the form of table functions

Incentivized

• When we demo our Jaspersoft environment to potential clients, their eyes light up and they sit up in their chairs a bit more. A lot of our meetings have ended with with the client very interested in our product due to Jaspersoft.
• Our existing clients have been very satisfied with the adhoc features of Jaspersoft. We've been able to provide them better access to their data on their terms instead of ours. Of course this turns into a huge win for us.
• We've always used SQL Server Reporting Services to deliver our reports to our clients. Converting to Jaspersoft has allowed us to generate the reporting layer that our clients demand. They no longer feel like they are settling for what we offer.