We performed a comparison between IBM Cognos and SQL Server based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Tableau, Oracle and others in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools."Mapbox integration for geospatial analytics down to longitude/latitude layers."
"Cognos is the best application with dashboards,batch reporting, jobs, events and ad-hoc reporting for business users."
"The initial setup is quite straightforward."
"Cognos' most valuable features are the bundled studios, simple UI, and advanced features like the ability to create data modules."
"It is a stable product."
"It has a very powerful edit feature which allows users to back out of changes (undo) without forcing them to recreate entire reports."
"The solution's initial setup process is easy."
"It's enabled us to report directly from our main application systems. We're removing islands of data and we're removing inefficiencies, where people or small divisions had their own store of information."
"SQL Server is similar to other Microsoft products, such as BI, they are easy to use. You do not need to have an expensive BD to maintain them. All the useful intuitive features you find in Microsoft solutions you will find in SQL Server."
"The pricing of the solution is okay. It's less expensive than Oracle, for example."
"The scalability of the product is great."
"SQL Server is a highly stable solution."
"I like that it's relatively stable."
"SQL Server is an inexpensive solution. I recommend it if the project isn't sensitive. SQL is similar to Oracle and integrates well with tools in the cloud environment. The difference is that Oracle is for data solutions where there is replication and moderation."
"I have contacted technical support, and overall my experience with technical support was okay."
"The latest version supports for big data analytics. SQL Server's vector processing-based batch execution mode is now available to the entire execution of R or Python code. Since much of the work that tends to be done in R and Python involves aggregation, batch mode - which processes rows of data several at a time, can be very helpful."
"This product could use improvement in terms of usability for those with less technical know how."
"The charts and graphics are weak."
"The solution seems to slow down the servers."
"We need more predictive analytical functions, not only diagnostic or decryptic analytics."
"Data modeling needs to be improved. We use the ETL process, and when we get errors, we then need to identify which structural change is required. The error messaging should be better. They should be descriptive rather than semantic."
"There are many problems with the product's stability part, making it an area where improvements are required."
"Tableau and Power BI are faster than Cognos."
"They should provide improved visual reporting."
"Performance could be improved."
"The solution is expensive. The licensing costs are high."
"Could have additional security."
"It would be great if we were able to run it on multiple operating systems and not only stick with Windows."
"The only item which I can list is application failure during Integration Services debugging, when restarting a process flow. In a number of instances the solutions fails. I have not given this much thought and simply stop and start the debugging service rather than restarting."
"If SQL Server could perhaps run on Linux, that would be good. Most of us prefer Linux and I've used a lot of Linux. I understand that SQL Server is quite powerful, but I'm not sure if the functionality is there, but if it could be used in an open-source type of environment, it would be very good."
"They can build more performance-tuning tools in it. They can also make the stuff a little more user-friendly and provide the ability to schedule jobs. They can perhaps also streamline it a little bit so that it is not so resource-intensive, which would be helpful. SQL Server has a tendency to consume all the memory you allow it to. If you are not careful, you can basically break your server. I would like to see it having a smaller footprint in terms of system resource consumption. They might want to consider re-evaluating their pricing. It is expensive."
"It would definitely be better if SQL Server were free."
IBM Cognos is ranked 7th in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools with 132 reviews while SQL Server is ranked 1st in Relational Databases Tools with 260 reviews. IBM Cognos is rated 8.0, while SQL Server is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of IBM Cognos writes "Improved the quality of our KPIs, while reducing calls to the IT department". On the other hand, the top reviewer of SQL Server writes "Easy to use and provides good speed and data recovery". IBM Cognos is most compared with Microsoft Power BI, Oracle OBIEE, Tableau, SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform and Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services, whereas SQL Server is most compared with MariaDB, SAP HANA, Oracle Database, LocalDB and QlikView.
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