Reporting tools - cognos vs hyperion vs argos
Hello All,
We at USD are going live with Banner in a phased approach with the Admissions team being the first one to go live in Sept/Oct 2007 and Registration in Mar 2008. We also bought ODS and EDW as our Data Store and Data Warehouse solution and to leverage these two products now we are looking into an effective reporting tool. We had demos of Hyperion, Arcgs and Cognos on campus.
My personal opinion on these products:
1) Hyperion - I didn't attend the presentation/demo. So i have no idea about the product.
2) Argos - Its a good product almost comparable with Cognos. Its a e-visions product (or atleast associated with e-visions) which again is a prefered sungard partner.
a) It is almost as expensive as Cognos
b) It doesn't communicate with App works - but i believe job scheduling can still be done.
c) It is easy to use (by the end users) and also very easy to develop reports from the server.
c) Its still a developing product - Its not yet a totally integrated product with Banner - The next release would probably be more compatible with Banner. They were talking about building new API's for better integration with the luminis portal and appworks.
3) Cognos - Its a well known ETL tool - a billion dollar company - and now a prefered Sungard Partner.
a) Its expensive but so are the other products.
b) It integrates well with Sungard products and Sungard prefered partner products.
c) For the end users it looks like it gives more options than the other products and
d) takes care of the security and fine-grained access also.
e) It is easy to use and its a powerful reportign tool.
[NOTE: All the opinions mentioned above are my personal opinions which came out of a 30 min presentation - Please feel free to correct me if i am wrong]
Do you guys agree with these statements? If you could write down your observations and/or comparisions - that would be great.
Thank you,
Reporting Tools for Banner
Arcos? Or, is it Argos? Argos is an Evisions Reporting product. If you have not considered it, you should. Bruce
Thanks Bruce
Yes it is Argos - Sorry about that Bruce. Thank you for correcting me.
Well it is an equally impressive product. I wanted to see how many of us use this product and if they are satisfied with it.
Thank you,
-Shiva
Reporting Tools - Argos
Shiva, I am testing Argos 3.0 Beta which I believe will be released very soon. I will update our Argos 2.5 as soon as 3.0 is released.
The Evisions folks are putting a lot of resources into Argos development. A complete Argos license is priced at a fraction of a minimal Cognos license and Argos does not have added per user fees.
As a Banner site, you will likely have purchased other Evisions products, such as FormFusion or IntelleCheck. Many Banner clients find the Evisions helpdesk to be the best of class; they actually resolve problems for you.
We will probably be using Argos with our PeopleAdmin daily extracts in a few weeks. This will be connecting to a MS Access Database instead of an Oracle one (or perhaps in addition to Banner).
I tested connecting to an Oracle APEX workspace and we are planning to use Argos with non-Banner Oracle Applications.
We do not have ODS or EDW, but I have seen the Demos of Argos with these products and the Cube reports off the Data Warehouse products are amazing.
When Evisions develops reports for one user, they give it to all the others. Amazing concept?
Oh, they are a SunGard partner (Collaborative Member) too.
No, this isn’t an endorsement from my uni. We don’t do those.
Bruce
directly against banner tables?
Bruce:
Do you create reports directly against Banner tables with Argos?
We already own cognos 8bi with reportnet. I am attempting to evaluate reporting tools, but not finding much info.
If you have time could you answer a couple of things?
1. Can cognos and argos be used to go directly against the Banner tables.
2. Which would be better for end user ad hoc reporting? (we will have the edw and ods)
directly against banner tables?
Yes, we do report directly from Banner Tables. Many Banner sites do not. Some for "security" reasons and some for performance issues, especially the larger sites.
There are sites that have a "reporting" copy of Banner, usually a snapshot of the previous day, but you could have it be current.
Your end users should gain a lot from reporting from the ODS and EDW due to ease of use and speed advantages, especially with ODS which is a flattened Banner (as I understand it, but we do not have either product).
Running a Cube report should definitely work better from these warehouse products. Do not be surprised to find that you may still need to report from Banner even with the warehouses. Bruce
Thanks!
Yes I think anytime we need "real time" data we will have to go against Banner. The ODS and EDW are always going to be a day behind from what I understand.
So even when reporting against ODS and EDW we would need some outside client software correct? Like SQL *Plus, Oracle SQL Developer, Argos, Cognos etc...?
Outside Client software required for ODS/EDW?
Since ODS/EDW are Oracle databases, you have a wide choice in reporting tools.
Without a client, SQL*Plus is available on an Oracle Server, as are C and COBOL on the Banner Server. But, with ODS/EDW I would expect to see most reporting done using a client.
While there has been some confusion about Congos being required, be assured that Congos is just one reporting option. Congos is not required.
The fairly new SunGardHE ODS Self Service Reporting (SSR) is built upon Oracle APEX (Oracle Application Express, formerly called HTML DB). I have some links to the Summit sessions on this at http://www.uaex.edu/bknox/BannerAPEX.htm
APEX has some minor reporting. Since APEX is really Oracle PL/SQL, programmers can make it do a lot. As an Ad Hoc Reporting tool for end-users, it would be very basic without pre-written “templates”.
APEX is serving PL/SQL generated webpages from the Oracle Server.
We use a variety of reporting tools with Banner. Since much of Banner was done in C and COBOL, those are always in play. Most of my work is done command line SQL*Plus on an AIX (IBM UNIX) box.
(Do not start using the Windows SQL*Plus client; it is being deprecated. I never liked it anyway:)
Many programmers use a development client such as Toad or the newer Oracle SQL Developer as their standard tool rather than command line SQL*Plus. For Forms work and other more elaborate development work, Oracle Discoverer is probably your tool.
A common coding approach is to create a summary Table and report from that info. A mini-warehouse on the fly. Often programmers will build a Table of PIDMs and use that Table to drive a more complex Query. There can be significant speed and ease of coding advantages.
We also use MS Access and Argos with Banner. You can use Windows’ SQL Query and Excel with Banner, but most do not. Whichever tool you use, you will find Export to Excel format to be very popular with your users. All of the tools can do this, but some make it much easier to do. To make an accountant happy give them CSV extract files which can be opened into Excel by just Double-Clicking on the file (no Import dialog required).
A big concern with using any Client software will be security. Argos, e.g., addresses this by running on a server which encrypts any info sent to the user.
There are lots of other tools being used with Banner. Some of the ones we use are referenced on my home page: http://www.uaex.edu/bknox/
Bruce