Business Objects Vs QlikView A comparative study…

“ Choosing the best business intelligence tool can be a confusing process. There are dozens of

vendors of business intelligence and Big Data analytics solutions whose marketing messages all

sound alike”

DENNIS KS, BI Consultant

Dennis KS has almost two years of experience in Business Intelligence, expertise in

SAP Business intelligence & Business Objects and also familiarized with the

reporting tools like QlikView and tableau. He could be the part of SAP

implementation projects and also the part of several analytical projects.

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Table of Contents Business Reporting ...................................................................................................................................... 2

Business Objects

QlikView

Comparative Study .......................................................................................................................... 3

Information’s

Product

Applications

Hardware and Licenses

Technology

Feature Comparison

Strategic Analysis .......................................................................................................... ……………..11

Summary ....................................................................................................................................... 12

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Business Reporting

Business reporting or enterprise reporting is "the public reporting of operating and financial data

by a business enterprise," or "the regular provision of information to decision-makers within an

organization to support them in their work."

Reporting is a fundamental part of the larger movement towards improved business

intelligence and knowledge management. Often implementation involves extract, transform, and

load (ETL) procedures in coordination with a data warehouse and then using one or

more reporting tools. While reports can be distributed in print form or via email, they are

typically accessed via a corporate intranet.

With the dramatic expansion of information technology, and the desire for increased

competitiveness in corporations, there has been an increase in the use of computing power to

produce unified reports which join different views of the enterprise in one place. This reporting

process involves querying data sources with different logical models to produce a human

readable report—for example, a computer user has to query the Human Resources databases and

the Capital Improvements databases to show how efficiently space is being used across an entire

corporation.

SAP BusinessObjects (a.k.a. BO, BOBJ) is an enterprise software company, specializing

in business intelligence (BI). BusinessObjects was acquired in 2007 by SAP

AG a German company. The company claimed more than 46,000 customers worldwide in its

final earnings release prior to being acquired by SAP. Its flagship product is BusinessObjects XI,

with components that provide performance management, planning, reporting, query and analysis

and enterprise information management. Business Objects also offers consulting and education

services to help customers deploy its business intelligence projects. Other toolsets enable

universes (the Business Objects name for a semantic layer between the physical data store and

the front-end reporting tool) and ready-written reports to be stored centrally and made selectively

available to communities of users.

QlikTech is a software company based in Radnor, Pennsylvania, World's Fastest Growing BI

tool. With 10.3 customers being added every working day. QlikTech is the provider

of QlikView, business intelligence software. QlikView is a. Is an IN-memory based BI tool

which can be deployed in a week's time. It comes at HALF the TCO and delivers TWICE the

value compared to any OLAP based BI Solution In QUARTER of the TIME

QlikView is the most flexible Business Intelligence platform for turning data into knowledge.

More than 24,000 organizations worldwide have enabled their users to easily consolidate, search,

and visually analyses all their data for unprecedented business insight using QlikView’s

simplicity.

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Comparative Study

QlikView is a single integrated tool for ETL, DW, Multi-Dimensional Analysis, Dash

boarding, Reporting, as per the Butler group user takes couple of hours training instead of

weeks taken by traditional OLAP based tools as in the way Business Objects is focusing

on Business intelligence, Score carding, Strategic planning, Budgeting, Forecasting,

Consolidation etc.

Business objects performance is based on Warehouses, as in QlikView warehouse is not

required.

While considering Server/User Licenses both are Named versions.

For Business Objects Web users are unlimitedly configured but in QlikView it’s limited

with User license.

QlikView uses its integrated Robust ETL to Extract data from multiple data sources and

forms a data repository using its patented Technology (AQL: Associative Query Logic),

and Empowers the customer to be independent of the vendor to create and use analytics,

But Business Objects required building data warehouse, normalization, schema writing,

and creation of cubes.

Both the Reporting tools will shows similarities in Technology wise like Supported

database, Supported Networks etc.

QlikView can connect to all major OLAP cubes like Business objects, and they are not

using any third party tools used in Business Objects like Crystal Reports.

SAP Business Objects BI solutions reduces BI TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) by

providing a single, integrated, scalable, highly available, business intelligence enterprise

platform with an award winning service oriented architecture (SOA). Compared to SaaS

BI solutions, the cost of QlikView is higher because of the procurement and maintenance

of the hardware needed for development, QA and production environments, and costs

associated with downtimes. Only when QlikView is compared to on premise BI products

does QlikView have a lower TCO.

SAP Business Objects provides a framework of data extraction and analysis that helps

business leaders make data centric managerial decisions that will help improve the

bottom line and maintain operational stability and efficiency over the long term.

QlikView Applications are constrained by how much RAM can be addressed in a single

hardware box. As a result, QlikView is designed for gigabytes-scale BI applications.

Given a typical 10x compression rate, QlikView performs well on data volumes up to 10-

20 gigabytes of compressed data. Since QlikView has to bulk load all data to the system

RAM, reloading data is a considerable workload and can take a substantial amount of

time. This limits the practical frequency of data updates in case of larger data volumes.

QlikView often grows inside of a larger organization via small and isolated departmental

deployments. At some point in time, corporate IT will step in and seek to take control.

Consolidating and managing separate QlikView deployments is very difficult and

requires considerable rework. Lastly, QlikView stores its data in proprietary files. If the

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need should arise, the proprietary storage format will complicate the migration of data

and reports from QlikView to other BI products.

Implementing SAP Business Objects BI solutions better streamlines business intelligence

operations by improving the business user information request process.IT department

should spend less time intercepting and interpreting information request. Allow users to

define information requirements, create queries, analyze and share information with less

reliance on IT While QlikView lacks some of the advanced capabilities required for

creating highly formatted reports. QlikView is designed for interactive analysis and not

for report writing. To create a formatted report in QlikView requires the use of macros

and the duplication and maintenance of QlikView objects. Previously created QlikView

objects need to be cloned and placed into a “Report Section” in QlikView.

Empower business users by providing them the ability to easily create ad-hoc queries and

manage powerful data analysis to obtain deeper business insight regardless of database

platform complexity, But QlikView does not offer the richness of MDX and other logical

query languages provided by traditional on premise BI products. These languages enable

end users to create far more powerful calculations (e.g. via addressing cells position ally

in either a materialized or logical cube) than are possible in QlikView. QlikView

provides a user interface for users to interactively explore and analyze information based

on associations between different data sources. This is a unique approach but because it is

not a logical query language, it has limitations.

QlikView implements in a matter of days, as always. Now, QlikView 8 brings real time

to in-memory analysis. Using newly released APIs, QlikView can have data streamed

into the memory model. Imagine real time stock tickers, and feeds from real-time

systems, while the Business Objects requires more time for the implementation.

Business objects require worrying about versioning - both data versioning, and business

object versioning, As compared with QlikView.

Creates personalized analysis. Users have the ability to create and save their own

personalized QlikViews – without impacting the “master” QlikView. This allows users to

define QlikViews according to their individual needs, analyses multiple scenarios and

refine results until they get the exact answers needed. In BOs require to write

a new object for a new entity - this might not be fully true as design might encourage

reuse, but cannot beat the dataset, in which to setup the object have to write zero code.

QlikView Allows people to work better together. QlikView reports, and secure links, can

now be sent directly via email and server links. People can share their findings with

colleagues, who can then build on that analysis with their own information – continually

strengthening the organization’s intelligence like as Business Objects.

In SAP Business Objects Lose any enhancements Microsoft may provide with in future

versions of .NET. If in .NET 1.1, shied away from datasets, because of

its serialization problems, probably spent a very long time getting business objects

working. Only to find out that MS fixed it in .NET 2.0, any way QlikView Does not use.

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QlikView’s associative data model is designed for deployment speed and for providing

users with an environment that is designed to encourage data exploration. In comparison,

the products of leading BI vendors like Oracle, Micro strategy and Business Objects use

logical dimensional models that are core to BI best practices that have been proven out

over the last 10 years. The reason that QlikView abandons this approach is because

traditionally logical modeling requires much more time to set up and is technically

complex. However, when done properly, it allows more analysis flexibility and power

than associative data models. The Burst approach is to combine the benefits of logical

modeling with the quick time to value realized in a SaaS environment.

While QlikView provides a scripting language for integrating and loading data from

multiple sources into memory, it does not provide advanced ETL capabilities that are

needed for more complicated data integration use cases, like parsing of web log data for

sequence analysis and hierarchy tree navigation also In BOs are not directly data bind

able. Have to write the code to make that happen.

QlikView makes no distinction between columns that are facts and columns that are

attributes. While this is designed to encourage data exploration, it makes the creation of

well-defined formatted reports more complicated and time consuming.

The latest release of QlikView provides a feature that allows organizations to run a script

for continually updating the in-memory data of a QlikView deployment. Previously, this

was not possible but even with this feature, only scenarios where updates to the source

system are infrequent and limited in volume would benefit from this. For fully scalable

real-time analysis and reporting purposes, a BI platform needs to be able to query the

source system or database directly and on demand.

By Comparing with QlikView Concurrency is a bigger pain to manage using BOs. This

refers to both thread concurrency and database concurrency Business objects either

require writing the equivalent of a data adapter, or they encourage filling the object as the

connection is open which severely impacts connection pooling performance. Breaking

this single rule can cause application performance to degrade by about 20 times in a

concurrent environment.

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Feature Comparison:

Features Business Objects QlikView

Analytic functionality Yes Yes

Bubble up exceptions Yes This feature is better handled where the exceptions are managed at the lower level and not popped to the upper layer and confuses the user. However all precautions are taken to handle the exceptions efficiently.

Drill down Yes Yes

Drill through to source data

Yes Drill down to the transactional level, As to the aggregated data in case of OLAP based applications.

Ranking Yes Yes

Sorting Yes Yes

Restrict results by date range

Yes Yes

Includes dashboard Yes Yes

Time trending (for example, over 12 months)

Yes Yes, as many years as the database holds

Pareto filtering (automatically groups the categories that amount to less than 20% of a row or column total into "other")

Yes Yes

Calculations Yes Yes

Counts Yes Yes

Percentage of total Yes Yes

Allocations Yes Yes

Total and Sub-total Yes Yes

Create OLAP cubes Yes NOT Required, saves TIME and MONEY

Data extraction and transformation tools

Yes Integrated

Incremental extraction

Yes Yes

Impact analysis - Yes If want to make changes in the QlikView script or data source and want to know the impact of this change on report objects beforehand, could be in problem and may have to

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check each and every report manually and document it.

Can schedule process to run overnight

Yes Yes

Formatting Yes Yes

By dimension Yes Yes, No in Dimension

By level Yes Yes

By cell Yes Yes

Zero-row suppression Yes Zero/Null Field Suppressions

Conditional formatting by cell, e.g., highlight cells below threshold

Yes Yes

Returns text (e.g., if value > 90, returns "excellent")

Yes Yes

French version Yes Unicode: Can be Implemented in any Language

Working Platform BO is cross platform, which can run in any operation system

Only with Widows

Reports Yes Yes

Documentation Yes Yes

Metadata Yes Yes

OLAP functionality Yes NOT Required

Skip missing levels - support ragged dimensions

Yes Yes

Write back Yes Yes

With audit trail Yes Yes

Includes charting tools Yes, about 200s of charts and regional components

Yes

Access multiple cubes at a time

Yes Yes

Excel client Yes Yes

Internet Explorer client

Yes Yes

Netscape client Yes Yes

Geographical representation

Yes Yes

Drag and drop Yes Yes

Password security Yes YES: Up to the field level

By company Yes Yes

By department or Yes Yes

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division

By menu Yes Yes

By function (view, add, change, delete)

Yes Yes

By dimension Yes Yes

By level Yes Yes

By cell Yes Yes

Respect active directory authentication

Yes YES: Can be integrated with active directory authentication for a single log on per User

Respect database security

Yes Yes

Portal generation that includes HTML reports

Yes Yes

Report writer Yes NOT Required: Integrated feature

Web-based Yes Yes

Generate cube Yes NOT Required: Overcomes cube drawbacks

Drag and drop Yes Yes

WYSIWYG report design

Yes Yes

Technology Yes YES (AQL)

API-enabled (SDK provided)

Yes Yes

Web-based (only need browser at client)

Yes Yes

For entire application Yes Yes

Support for .NET web services

Yes Yes

Support for Java web services

Yes Yes

Transfer data to: Yes Yes

Report writer Yes QLIKVIEW Is not a report writer however it supports generating reports and this feature is integrated part of QlikView.

Excel Yes Yes

PivotTable Yes Yes

HTML Yes Yes

PDF Yes Yes

PowerPoint Yes COPY PASTE (CTRL+C, CTRL+V)

XML Yes Yes

Views Yes Yes

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Crosstabs Yes Yes

Charts Yes, Yes

Both crosstabs and chart at the same time

Yes Yes

Work flow Yes Open to function with third party tools

Alerts can be automatically triggered

Yes YES, In the form of popups and can be used to automate sending of mails, active/run other applications.

Limitation/Scalability over Data

Has Proven itself capable of handling hundreds or even thousands of users at once

QlikView is an in memory BI tool with a limitation of the amount of data based on the RAM size; whereas other tools are highly scalable.

Ad-Hoc Capability Allows users to generate their own "reports" or "analytics" without IT/analyst assistance

Poor Ad-Hoc Analysis

Metadata Management

Has very strong metadata management capability

Lack of Meta Data management

Tools Provides an array of different tools that can be used in different ways to achieve different goals or meet requirements from different user types, from speedy simple analysis (pole star) to complex dimensional analysis (voyager) to dashboards to reporting.

Provides a single tool for all users, meaning less training and implementation time and a more intuitive interface, but can't adapt to specific user needs

Mobile Reporting Yes No

BO Explorer Yes No

BI Widgets Yes No

Pixel Perfect Reporting

Yes No

IT Dependency Minimum, users need not be completely depend upon IT Team for any new object or field insertion. Universe solves the purpose here

High, Users needs to call or depend on IT team if they need new object or field in a report or in a chart

Semantic Layer BO provides Semantic layer between Backend database and front end reports which simplifies the complexity of the database by mapping technical terminology to user's usual business terminology

No semantic Layer

Live Office Connectivity

Business Objects also have Live office as a plugin which enables users to import Webi report into excel without actually logging into info view

No live office Connectivity

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QuAWS Complicated logics can be put on to the Business Objects Universe making it easy for users just to select the objects and creating their own reports. These reports can be saved, scheduled or used in a dashboard

Does not have Universe

Export data or metadata to XML

Yes No

Multi User development environment

Yes No

SQL Generation Possible If want to see the SQL generated behind a query, can't see in Qlik View

Resolving circular loops and Traps

Contexts & Aliases Aliases only

User based and Role based Security

Graphical interface to implement user based & role based

No

Real time analysis and Reporting

Yes No

Data Modeling Logical, Logical modeling needs much more time to set up and is technically complex. However when done properly, it allows more analysis flexibility and power than associative data models.

Associative

Hardware Maintenance

Very low Very high as Qlik View Uses in memory concept, loads all the data & information in its RAM thus leads to much bigger hardware cost

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Strategic analysis

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Summary:

Choose QlikView if:

Rapid Time to Value.

No need to pre builds a Data warehouse. If don´t have one, will not need it.

Queries with sub second responses, achieved with In-Memory Data.

Enable users to explore data from less detail (more aggregated data) to transaction level

(detailed data).

High interactive Dashboards.

One Single Product for ETL, Development and End User Analysis.

Empower Users with the ability to create their own analysis with their own data.

Choose BO if:

Want to expend lot of time and money building a data warehouse and that is not a

problem in project. Connecting BO directly to production database could seriously

impact performance.

Also have a dedicated DBA to manage the data warehouse.

Users need to create static Reports, not dynamic Analysis.

If already a SAP customer, maybe they gave the software for free. But still need to pay

a lot of consulting.