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Oracle OBIEE vs SAP Crystal Reports comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 4, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
6.9
Oracle OBIEE boosts reporting speed and decision-making despite some ROI challenges and enhances financial outcomes with WebLogic setups.
Sentiment score
6.3
SAP Crystal Reports delivers excellent ROI by enhancing ERP reporting and efficiency, with returns exceeding 1000% despite training costs.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
5.8
Oracle OBIEE's customer service is mixed, with prompt responses but inconsistent resolution quality and frequent upgrade suggestions.
Sentiment score
5.9
SAP Crystal Reports support is mixed, with larger clients prioritized, leaving smaller users often relying on online communities.
The tendency to route users to sales personnel with limited technical expertise detracts from the support experience.
I have not encountered any problems requiring assistance.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
6.9
Oracle OBIEE is scalable and versatile for enterprises, but complexity and infrastructure dependency can lead to performance issues.
Sentiment score
7.6
SAP Crystal Reports is scalable for medium to large businesses, but smaller companies may find it costly.
While Oracle OBIEE is scalable, it is more of a niche product designed to work specifically with Oracle systems.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
6.7
Oracle OBIEE is stable but needs proper configuration and infrastructure for high user concurrency and optimal performance.
Sentiment score
7.0
SAP Crystal Reports has become more stable since 2013, with most users experiencing improved reliability and performance.
 

Room For Improvement

Oracle OBIEE is hindered by outdated visuals, complex usability, performance issues, and high costs, requiring enhancements and better support.
SAP Crystal Reports needs enhanced visualization, integration, and debugging to address interface complexity, performance issues, and compatibility limitations.
Oracle OBIEE has a steep learning curve compared to tools like SQL Server or Power BI.
Enabling better practices and testing to enhance data accuracy and efficiency for company sectors.
If it is closed due to any problem, it should be able to recover where I left off, similar to Excel, which should be a feature for SAP Crystal Reports.
 

Setup Cost

Oracle OBIEE's high cost and complex licensing can be offset by customizations and negotiated discounts for large-scale use.
SAP Crystal Reports pricing varies, around $500 per license; discounts and free viewing options exist, training adds costs.
Oracle OBIEE is quite expensive, especially when compared to Microsoft's solutions.
 

Valuable Features

Oracle OBIEE offers interactive dashboards, data visualization, secure data merging, and cloud-based architecture for advanced analytics and mobile access.
SAP Crystal Reports offers robust data visualization, extensive data connections, dynamic features, rapid development, and seamless Business Objects integration.
A valuable feature of Oracle OBIEE is its ability to automate some tasks, such as invoice analysis, saving a significant amount of clerical work.
SAP Crystal Reports has had a very positive impact and benefits. It's a powerful tool to design any kind of report if you have knowledge of the database, and it can attach to both HANA and SQL databases.
The efficiency gained by our organization from SAP Crystal Reports is measurable through multiple export formats such as PDF and Excel.
 

Categories and Ranking

Oracle OBIEE
Ranking in Reporting
4th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
158
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (6th)
SAP Crystal Reports
Ranking in Reporting
7th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
51
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Reporting category, the mindshare of Oracle OBIEE is 4.8%, down from 6.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAP Crystal Reports is 2.7%, down from 3.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Reporting
 

Featured Reviews

Ashok Bhadra - PeerSpot reviewer
Though comprehensive, it is expensive
The solution's most valuable feature is that it is a very comprehensive tool. Oracle OBIEE is a really robust tool for a very large enterprise implementation. Its features in terms of physical data model to logical data model building are all really robust. Though somebody else had developed the tool for the client for whom I used the tool, it was very well done. The data modeling was very well done, and it depends on the person who is executing it, as I hadn't developed it. I had just enhanced it. I had seen whatever my role was, but somebody had initially developed it. It was developed very well. It has a fantastic feature of documenting. When you work with many clients, you see the documentation is always missing, and you end up taking up some other vendor's job. It is usually very hard to figure out technically what was done, what was not done, and where the data is, so the data dictionaries are not up to date, and information documentation is always very poor. Oracle OBIEE has a built-in feature where you can actually create entire documentation of all the data elements and how they are linked, and it throws out HTML documents that are all interlinked, so if you have an entire directory structure, it helps create the document. You can find out which logical model links to which physical table, and it is very easy to identify. There are multiple combinations if you want to identify one particular table and how many models are involved. You just need to click a hyperlink click, and it gives you all the information. If somebody has made any enhancements, you can just regenerate the document as there is a component of the tool that generates the documentation automatically, which is brilliant, I think.
MUHAMMAD_IMRAN - PeerSpot reviewer
Crystal Reports enables comprehensive data visualization but requires consistent integration practices for optimal accuracy
SAP Crystal Reports provides a clear picture for customer and vendor orders, showing whether orders are pending and delivering receivable and payable statuses, which allows understanding different scenarios categorically for client needs, ultimately satisfying both customers and clients. The efficiency gained by our organization from SAP Crystal Reports is measurable through multiple export formats such as PDF and Excel, which makes accessing and understanding data from the database easier. The ability to generate different formats facilitates better data analysis, although occasionally advanced features such as workbench center directly enhance the experience. The impact of SAP Crystal Reports' dynamic parameters significantly affects the customization and flexibility of reports, allowing adjustments to parameters based on client needs, such as date, users, and ledger views, ensuring data is correctly collected and formatted according to the client's requirements.
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Reporting solutions are best for your needs.
865,164 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Comparison Review

it_user79932 - PeerSpot reviewer
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
17%
Government
12%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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 do you like most about Oracle OBIEE?
The most valuable feature of Oracle OBIEE is its ability to handle large volumes of data and provide traditional BI functionalities that developers can easily understand.
What needs improvement with SAP Crystal Reports?
I believe SAP Crystal Reports could be improved or enhanced because one of the problems I am facing with it is that sometimes it hangs and uses too much memory, which is frustrating. If it is close...
What is your primary use case for SAP Crystal Reports?
My usual use cases for SAP Crystal Reports involve designing reports based on the requirements of the clients and management, such as profit and loss, graphs, multiple reports, sub reports, and das...
What do you like most about SAP Crystal Reports?
We use SAP Crystal Reports for operational reporting.
 

Also Known As

OBIEE, Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition, Oracle BI, Oracle BI EE 11g
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Banca Transilvania, BeckmanCoulter, Hong Kong Housing Society, HealthShare, Ivanhoe Cambridge Unifies, and Home Credit, and Finance Bank.
City of Buenos Aires, ASR Group, Citrix, EarlySense, Usha International Limited, Automotive Resources International (ARI), LivePerson, Coelba (Grupo Neoenergia), RZD Russian Railways, National Basketball Association - NBA, TALLY WEiJL, El Machetazo, Young Heroes, Mozzart, Mitsui Knowledge Industry (MKI) , Surgutneftegas Open Joint Stock Company, The VELUX Group, AOK Bundesverband, AL-KO KOBER GROUP
Find out what your peers are saying about Oracle OBIEE vs. SAP Crystal Reports and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,164 professionals have used our research since 2012.