Discover your data with Discoverer!
December 12, 2018
Discover your data with Discoverer!
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Business Intelligence Discoverer
Discoverer is a great reporting tool and currently we use it across the organization but divided by business units - each business unit within the organization has their own setup for Discoverer. Discoverer puts great control in the hands of the end users. We divided user groups into Super Users and Consumers. Super Users of that group understand the data and create reports. Consumers will consume the reports and make a decision accordingly.
- Discoverer puts the control in end-user hands. Super Users, who have privileges to create reports, can create and test SQL Queries in SQL Developer and then use the Custom SQL option in Discoverer to create a report based on that SQL. This means the user doesn't have to run the query every day manually, but the report is ready whenever they want to access it.
- Discoverer eliminates the costly developer layer. Super Users are business users who can create reports for their team on their own. This means there is no need for developers or explaining to them how to use the data.
- Discoverer consolidates the tables into business areas. Each business area can serve a specific set of users within a department. This helps make the management of reports and data easy.
- Duplication of data. While Discoverer supports business areas, it allows a lot of duplication. The same table can exist in multiple business areas. Similar queries and reports exist in multiple places. As multiple Super Users exist in each business area, there are high chances of duplication and increased storage cost.
- OPatch doesn't work well with Discoverer. Patching Discoverer is a pain. OPatch may not be applicable in all scenarios.
- No direct path to upgrade Discoverer to OBIEE 12c. If an organization decides to upgrade their Discoverer to OBIEE12c, there is no direct path. They have to upgrade to OBIEE 11g and then to 12c, and even that process is flawed. As mentioned earlier, the duplication of business areas in each End User Layer may create a messy OBIEE RPD with a lot of duplications. It is always advisable to launch a new OBIEE project rather than migrating from Discoverer.
- Lack of dashboards. Unlike other BI tools, Discoverer lacks a dashboard. However, we can build one on OAS, but it needs lot of customizations and integrations. Discoverer web interface is bad at managing cache. Users frequently complain about stale data.
Discoverer is more of a departmental BI tool. OBIEE is much more expensive compared to Discoverer. OBIEE needs an ETL and Reporting team to develop reports. OBIEE involves complex modelling of RPD whereas it is much simpler with Discoverer. With Discoverer, it is as simple as importing database tables, defining joins and running the queries.
Discoverer stacks very well on top of ERP systems directly. Users can run reports on ERP tables using Discoverer. To perform similar jobs through OBIEE, one has to either use Noetix or another transactional model.
Discoverer stacks very well on top of ERP systems directly. Users can run reports on ERP tables using Discoverer. To perform similar jobs through OBIEE, one has to either use Noetix or another transactional model.