Any scenario where you need to reach back into TIBCO support is something I would highly avoid. Most responses at the second round get you pointed to engaging their professional services. The general mentality seems to be "since our product acquisition cost is low, why don't you engage PS to get the value you need" If you are looking at enterprise scenarios, I would highly recommend looking at other more established products.
If you desire to 'empower' employees to create or edit their own reports, Noetix is a great tool, though I am not particularly an 'empowerment' person. In my experience most people have enough work of their own, so to tell them they now have to create their own reports can cause problems. If someone is available, like I am, to create the reports based on user requirements, then the report can be shared with the user and they can make changes as needed. I have several users who use the same report over and over for slightly different applications, and they are happy to make the small alterations, but creating whole new reports can seem like a daunting task. I tell my users I don't want them to become frustrated. If they want to try on their own, fine, but don't waste more than half an hour, and if you start to get frustrated, stop and IM me. Ninety-nine times out of 100 I already have a report that will give them exactly what they need. I've done extensive training, and find it's quite easy for users to pick up
Very intuitive tool - An Advanced reporting user can figure out in a day on the end to end operations.
Easy customization - Simple changes in UI makes it less headache for the end user who maintains the tool. Being an open source product (offers Jasper web services) makes a lot developer friendly compared to SSRS, Cognos etc.
Easy Connectivity - Can connect to any data source (can connect to multiple data sources) for a single report - can be customized.
Community - A very strong community available online, videos - on basic how to questions, also provides assistance to use case specific scenarios.
Ease of Reporting - Can create a reports with in few clicks with out struggle.
Domain Designer - A very powerful tool you can create a dataset using clicks with out writing SQL code.
OnDemand Scheduling - A very good scheduling feature and a has got lot more simplistic compared to other popular tools like Cognos.
Jasper Studio - Very good programmatic tool (desktop tool) lets you customize the reports more company specific, can embed complex coding with 3rd party languages like Java, Groovy (scripting language).
Noetix makes reporting easy. Users can combine vtables (the Noetix term for its views), add or delete columns, add filters or parameters, sort, add totals to columns, all from an easy to use interface. It comes with a very large number of already written reports for all areas of Oracle reporting, but it also allows for custom vtables to be written, for Oracle or any database, to expand the number of available reports.
Noetix has an Excel add-in that is marvelous. It eliminates the need to run a report in the web application and export to Excel. The add-in can run very large reports, up to a million lines. Once a report is run in Excel, it can be saved, and then refreshed whenever needed. It's a really good tool.
Noetix is flexible. Joins can be added to existing Noetix vtables and also to custom vtables, to give users a large amount of data configurations to choose from. It also allows users to create calculated fields to any report.
Noetix is easy to administer. Users can be added or removed and grouped by the level of permission. Although, in our case, it validates against Oracle, the level of security is dictated by Noetix.
Easier to customize the Jasper Server GUI. More flexibility with the input controls look and feel and maybe more input control types to select from.
Have browser event functionality in the reporting itself.
An easier way to iterate through an object. Maybe an option that tells the report Java run-time to stop following the report sequential flow and first integrate through this stated object many times.
An easier way to create a list and add values to this list.
Maybe one could stipulate the process flow of what needs to be computed first in a given field.
The crosstab is a bit buggy on the Jasper studio side, so if that could be improved.
Better and more examples of custom components
The jive functionality on the tables needs an update. It looks so old and outdated.
I like the fact that the output is standard, but I would like to be able to move columns around on the output screen, rather than having to go back to the editing screen, move the columns, then rerun the report.
Drag and drop of columns would be nice on the edit screen. Currently if you add a column to a report, it automatically goes to the bottom. Relocation of the column has to be done a line at a time. I would prefer to be able to grab the field I want from those available, and drop it into the report where I want it.
When adding a filter (or parameter), the available fields automatically come up in alphabetical order, but on the columns screen, they don't. They come up in the order they actually are in the query. That means, when creating custom vtables, to have the fields in alphabetical order, one must put them that way. It would be nice if Noetix put the fields in alphabetical order for the user.
Even though there are challenges with Architecture, sizing and other areas with Jaspersoft provided that Jaspersoft comes up with the right set of innovation, performance, scalability, and documentation in future it will be great expansion (win-win) situation for the clients and as well as Jaspersoft.
The overall performance of this platform has been excellent. It is easy to work with the user interface. Creation of digital content and publishing on our social media platforms during marketing has been easy. Running our applications and upgrading our system to meet international standards has been successful. The user dashboard displays reports and performance of all departments effectively.
We have only had a couple of tickets to be open while using Jaspersoft. Each time we have a very prompte responses that would meet our expectations. We always felt that our issues were being address in a timely manner
While the training was somewhat beneficial, a lot of what was taught to us was what we managed to figure out in the weeks prior. It did provide some useful tips and reference material, but overall something more tailored to our requirements would've been better.
New releases can be very buggy, also lacking when it comes to standard time zones and formats that are outside the US. As a company we never feel comfortable implementing a new release for at least 3-6 months due to errors that are found
Crystal reports is very expensive and does not integrate well with java based servers. Jasper also provides community edition, if we every want to downgrade the use, we always have the option of eliminating the server and using the reports as they are. Jasper also give you the opportunity to build BI on case by base basis including Dashboards.
I believe Noetix is much easier to use than either Crystal Reports or InfoMaker. When I worked with InfoMaker I used to say it took 5 minutes to get the data and 5 hours (and sometimes days) to make it look good. The same can be true for Crystal Reports. Noetix has a standard format, and most people export to Excel anyway. Who prints reports? So formatting is not all that important.
Jaspersoft Community Edition has not had any significant impact on our ROI as we have purchased the commercial edition of the product.
The only impact on ROI is that when we bring on new developers, he or she can begin work using the community edition while awaiting the installation of the commercial edition.
