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Oracle Essbase vs Oracle OBIEE comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Oracle Essbase
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
4.6
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
Database Development and Management (12th)
Oracle OBIEE
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
5.7
Number of Reviews
159
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (17th), Reporting (11th)
 

Mindshare comparison

Oracle Essbase and Oracle OBIEE aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Oracle Essbase is designed for Database Development and Management and holds a mindshare of 1.4%, up 0.9% compared to last year.
Oracle OBIEE, on the other hand, focuses on BI (Business Intelligence) Tools, holds 1.8% mindshare, down 3.6% since last year.
Database Development and Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Oracle Essbase1.4%
Oracle Enterprise Manager4.1%
Redgate SQL Toolbelt Essentials4.1%
Other90.4%
Database Development and Management
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Oracle OBIEE1.8%
Microsoft Power BI7.7%
Tableau Enterprise6.2%
Other84.3%
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Bhavya N - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior System Engineer at Infosys
Ensuring efficient data analysis and reporting while identifying areas for calculation and export improvements
The features of Oracle Essbase are valuable, such as its multi-dimensional database used for dynamic calculations and reporting purposes. These features are valuable because they support multi-dimensional data views, allowing users to analyze relationships across various data categories and establish a comprehensive perspective on business operations. Moreover, dynamic calculations allow real-time data analysis, significantly improving the accuracy and depth of financial insights. I have utilized Essbase's data aggregation capabilities. The Oracle Essbase interface provides a good user experience, allowing users to easily navigate and analyze data with fast query performance, effective data visualization tools such as charts, graphs, and tables, and flexibility for customizable analysis and reporting, including the ability to create ad hoc reports. The benefits of the interface include improving productivity and enhancing decision-making.
AA
Analyst at Equifax Inc.
Unified semantic layer has driven informed credit risk decisions and real-time analytical insight
Performance-related issues are a concern, as in multiple reports I have seen, some reports were poorly performing. We can focus on implementation of performance so that reports are delivered within seconds. The user interface and self-service experience can be improved through modernization of the UI, addressing self-service limitations, and integrating with mobile. Technical and administrative complexities can also be addressed. Complexities such as system configuration require attention. In the initial setup of Oracle OBIEE, there are multiple things starting from infrastructure provisioning, database schemas, and WebLogic server installations. However, the RPD, the semantic layer, is the steepest hurdle. Security integration, integrating with LDAP or Active Directory, is rarely plug and play and requires deep knowledge of WebLogic. Deep knowledge is necessary when starting with the initial setup of Oracle OBIEE. Other dependencies include Java middleware and client tools. Since Oracle OBIEE deals with huge data, report performance is the biggest concern. The out-of-the-box setup is rarely optimized, so we need to manually check configuration files, such as nqsconfig.ini file settings. For recommendations in Oracle OBIEE, from what I have seen, we work with star schemas in the RPD. I always aim for the star schema in the business model, even if the physical source is normalized. This approach will impact the performance, speed of the data, and accuracy. Oracle OBIEE could improve to allow other schemas as well. Performance is a major area for improvement, and they should work on aggregating the persistence and improve the persistence wizard where we implement aggregations. Caching features have been given, including event polling tables where we can do purging and seeding, but the main focus should be with respect to schema designs.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Its multidimensional analysis is great; unlike relational, where you're linking together multiple tables, with Essbase, you basically define what the dimensions are beforehand, and you define the hierarchy, and then load the data, allowing you to do sophisticated analysis so that you can drill into it and slice and dice the data."
"The solution can handle a large volume of data."
"It is my opinion, it is more comfortable in Oracle rather than a SQL server."
"Oracle Essbase enables organizations to take their strategic decisions, which helps them make the right decisions at the right time."
"Oracle Essbase is a web integration system that integrates with other data systems."
"The solution is scalable."
"Essbase is extremely stable and low-maintenance."
"Essbase is a powerful tool that continues to provide value for companies."
"Flexibility, scalability, and the speed that you can pull these reports are the most valuable features."
"From my experience as Retail Planner and Business Analyst in fast paced companies, I would suggest this solution to anyone who wants to improve data analysis in terms of data read, performance, analytical culture throughout the company."
"It is very stable; it is much stronger than any other solution that I've seen till now."
"In my opinion, it is one of the best BI platforms and it provides a full range of capabilities from development to user experience."
"The cost factor is the most valuable feature; it's very cheap to deploy it enterprise-wide without having to worry about breaking the bank."
"Oracle Business EE has a futuristic vision for BI Server capabilities with support for answers, flexible dynamic dashboard, intelligent untime query engine, web and mobile analytics and support for structured and unstructured data."
"It provides excellent stability."
"This tool has helped us bring organizational data together on a single platform and query the organisational data in a pre-defined as well as ad-hoc fashion."
 

Cons

"The solution could be cheaper. It is costly, and the initial setup could be simplified."
"I would like to see an integration with application performance management and a version control management tool."
"They should improve the solution's performance."
"The solution could enhance business analytics. I delved into the data using Oracle Essbase to create a new support tool."
"The reporting tool of Essbase needs improvement."
"The ability to drive external reporting out for development could be improved."
"The technical support for EPM is bad. I don't remember anytime that the service support helped me in something."
"Essbase has a programming language, and it has a couple of functions to do forecasting, however, their feature set for that is not that good."
"They should develop greater visualization because their visualization isn't industry leading at the moment. The way you pull the data and see the data compared to other platforms, they're lagging a little bit behind. Also, their cost. I've got Oracle account managers trying to persuade me every day to purchase these licenses. Once you purchase OBIEE, then you have to purchase the virtualization and then you have to purchase the mobile license to operate on the mobile. It's really expensive."
"Setup and migration are very complex. Technically, Oracle accessory is extremely complex. These days, the industry demands a kind of Excel analysis, which is very easy to install, set up, and it's very developer-friendly as well as end-user friendly. OBIEE lacks all those features."
"Oracle OBIEEE's performance and licensing costs could be improved."
"It's a good tool, but its overall organization as an analytical tool, the layout of OBIEE, is not very good."
"Some of the legacy BI publisher features have been discarded in the newer versions. Having them would help the product."
"It doesn't have too many self-service capabilities, but it is good for the purpose that it serves."
"Ad-hoc analysis is tedious and lacks advanced capabilities."
"The quality of Oracle tech support depends: if you get a good person, it's very good; otherwise, it's very bad."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is a costly solution."
"I believe the licensing is on a monthly base."
"Essbase is competitively priced."
"The solution is expensive."
"In our organization, we use a user-based license for Oracle OBIEE, and I've heard that the license cost is based on the number of users."
"Pricing is an area that could be improved."
"It is an expensive solution."
"Power BI is less expensive than Oracle OBIEE. A benefit to Power BI is having the option to work with concurrent licensing."
"Oracle products are extremely expensive."
"The pricing we negotiated with Oracle. But, I do not have details."
"Be prepared to spend a lot of time and money."
"I think to spread this across an enterprise will be a significant investment."
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Comparison Review

it_user79932 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager - BI Head with 5,001-10,000 employees
Feb 4, 2015
Comparison of SAP BO, Tableau, QlikView, Cognos, Microsoft, OBIEE and Pentaho
1. SAP BO/BI Enterprise scalability Security Ease of use Semantic layer 2. Tableau Visualization Data discovery Turnaround time 3. IBM Cognos Enterprise scalability Security In-memory feature 4. MS BI - Flexibility 5. Pentaho - Open source but still enterprise grade 6. QlikView Data…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
18%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Construction Company
7%
Insurance Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Construction Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise14
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business41
Midsize Enterprise34
Large Enterprise105
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Oracle Essbase?
It's not that expensive, but also not cheap. I'm not sure because it's a private license.
What needs improvement with Oracle Essbase?
A significant area for improvement in Oracle Essbase is that financial statement analysis, CAPEX and OPEX analysis, and financial consolidation must be done manually, as Oracle Essbase doesn't incl...
What is your primary use case for Oracle Essbase?
The initial setup of Oracle Essbase is dependent on whether you select BSO or ASO cubes. First, you need to set up the type of information and once the type of cubes is defined, you need to define ...
How does Oracle OBIEE compare with Microsoft BI?
Oracle OBIEE is great in allowing design and creativity per the individual needs of the organization. Dashboards are fully customizable and very user-friendly. This solution is very stable. Oracle ...
Which Oracle product is better - OBIEE or Analytics Cloud?
Oracle OBIEE is designed to be relatively easy to set up and has a helpful customer support staff at the ready to assist customers. These are two attributes that make this system quite valuable. OB...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Oracle OBIEE?
Oracle OBIEE is quite expensive, especially when compared to Microsoft's solutions.
 

Also Known As

Essbase
OBIEE, Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition, Oracle BI, Oracle BI EE 11g
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

CHU de Rennes, Bellco Credit Union, Akindo Sushiro Co. Ltd, Deutsche Telekom AG, Samarco MineraÊo S.A., PCCW Ltd., QDQ media S.A.U., Boiron Italia, Specialized Bicycle Components Inc., Akindo Sushiro Co. Ltd., Air Canada, Daelim Industrial Co. Ltd.
Banca Transilvania, BeckmanCoulter, Hong Kong Housing Society, HealthShare, Ivanhoe Cambridge Unifies, and Home Credit, and Finance Bank.
Find out what your peers are saying about Quest Software, Nutanix, Oracle and others in Database Development and Management. Updated: June 2026.
902,988 professionals have used our research since 2012.