SAP BusinessObjects

Pluspunten

Not very difficult to set up universes (both .unv and .unx) and develop reports, schedule them, etc. So from a functionality standpoint, this tool is good.

Minpunten

1. It doesn't always behave the way it is expected. For example, I could not modify a report to point to a different table within the same universe (one table points to production schema data and another to test schema data).
2. When modifying a report to say, add a section, the alignment gets messed up and it takes some ninja mouse skills to get the section to appear where you want. Should not be that difficult to accomplish a simple task like this.
3. Sometimes the errors that pop up have a very cryptic message and troubleshooting where the problem is occurring is almost impossible. For example, the query that the system generates runs fine and produces results in a tool like Toad or SQL Developer, but the report does not execute due to some error (ORA-01830: Date format picture ends before conversion). It would be helpful to get some context around the error to help with troubleshooting.
4. Developers don't have the ability to look at basic information about the universe that the report is pointing to (e.g. location in CMS) which makes it hard to know whether the report is pointing to the development version of the universe or the production version.

Pluspunten

Complete product from Giant Vendor and has a great Echo system, Good for Complex/Huge Data Analysis models, Mass Publishing is a great advantage with this Product as i dont see this much of handy with any other Front end products, Robust model, With Design Studio and Lumira it could be a great product to integrate with any kind business model

Minpunten

Increasing number of tools in the suit confusing customers to choose what for what, Bit Expensive compare to other Reporting products, Recovery is not simple as we think in Failure cases, It requires huge amount of Hardware resources to build a medium/Large landscape, not simple as an end user product for all type of Developments...

Pluspunten

In windows platform its the dream come true, easy to use and too many SAP note supports online, also unlikely failures on your platform and server, Lumira and Web intelligence both awesome tools on reporting, Dataservices its one of the one of the most complete ETL (Extration, Transformation and Loading) on the market with many many opcions its tricky to use but once you understand it its simplify and optimice your Dba activities.

Minpunten

In Linux its a complete hell in my experience, even with Redhat the Node and server fail almost every week too many eviroment issue even an 2 years Linux administrator as myself ( i know its not so much but anyway) i had plenty of issue and problems to install it, the support and SAP not in this platform its almost 0, seems none try to install BO on linux just myself.

Pluspunten

It's intergrated in Microsoft Excel, so I can use all function of Excel on the data download by SAP Business Object.
Normally we have to go to the web version of the reporting tool and download report one by one, but with SAP business Object (Analysis Office), we can insert the data source one time, format it, do calculation with it (using all other Excel function). The next time when you need to update the data. Just simply refresh data source in your formatted file. All data are refreshed while your calculation/format are still there.
You can even write Excel VBA to load data with Analysis Office. It saves you a lot of time to download all reports based on different filter criterion.

Minpunten

First, it takes time to load if the data is too bid
Second, there is a limit (55 000 lines) on Excel. You can, of course, change the limit, but not everybody knows how to do it (or allowed to do it)
Thirdly, the prompts are not so well-designed and user-friendly. I normally have to scroll down a lot to find the filter. (imagine you have 10 different sheet, scrolling down will take long time).
Fourthly, VBA and Analysis Office are quite complicated to use and the trouble-shooting is quite annoying.

Pluspunten

I love most everything about BusinessObjects. It's a great way for our employees to self-service in many cases as previously they had no way to get access to larger data sets unless they put in a request with analytics. But now our Directors have access to data and reports at their fingertips with minimal training (they don't need an in-depth understanding of databases or SQL queries to use the software).

Minpunten

A con that is worth mentioning is that exporting large data sets can be a bit slow. But the ease of use and other benefits definitely outweigh that.