Dundas BI

Opmerkingen: I've been working in Business Intelligence for quite a long time and in the beginning it was hard to explore data and show information in form of data visualizations for the end users. Since I discovered Dundas BI, this task turned to be much more simple and easy to achieve! Dundas Bi has an IDE for developing Dashboards, Reports and Scorecards that uses the last technologies in web applications developments which makes your life simplier. The smart drag and drop design tools, the rich set of data visualizations customizable to the lowermost detail, the style and themes feature, turns possible to create rich and interactive dashboards in a breeze! Dundas BI comes with an ETL (Export , Transform and Load) layer, where you can clean and prepare your data, this is done using a canvas where you can drag your tables from a data source, choose the columns you want, aggregate them, join with other tables, filter and a lot of interesting features regarding the ETL process. It connects to a lot of data sources: Oracle, Microsoft SqlServer, Excel files, ... It is a collaborative tool, with scheduled reports, based on a metric or not, you can even annotate data points, writing a comment on it in a way that others can see and respond to it! Every view can be exported to excel, pdf, image and even powerpoint. The management of the software is in the form all in one! every thing is done in the application, from user creation object permissions, overall configuration, project exporting/importing and management!

Pluspunten: The drag and drop feature for creating views is a very productive feature. The ETL is also great, it's easy to use and, for more advanced users, it evens permits to write direct sql against tha data source you choose. Regarding performance it has two possibilities, you can cache in memory or in DBI data warehouse. The collaborative feature of this tool is a must to have feature, I specially like the data driven notification option that could alert you by email when a specific metric goes behind a threshold or state.

Minpunten: It needs to take a step further and aboard predicted analytics!

Pluspunten: Dundas is a conglomeration of expertly coded dashboard development tools and infrastructures. The thing I like most about Dundas is that they are very helpful, the gentleman assigned to me to educate me in the ways of Dundas, was one I will never forget to this day, he was calm, helpful, understanding and with his help I learned Dundas in no time. I like the way Dundas structure's its Dashboard development, it starts with virtual tables, where the programmer can manually or automatically generate SQL queries, these queries are then used for the basis of adding statistical flavour to the Dashboard, the way this is done is very straight forward. Dundas has a steep unforgiving learning curve, but when you master the fundamentals, the sky really is the limit. Also their support service is world class, the representatives will assist you in any way they can, they will help you understand what the issue you are facing is and provide a resolution. If they cant help you via email, they will 'WebEx' you, i.e skype call with 2 way screen control. Everything in Dundas is customizable, charts, graphs and other statistical data can be glossed up and made to look as simple or as plush as the user envisions. You can add formulae, trend analysis and other key statistical methods are employed by Dundas. They have charts for Finance, Risk analysis and other key statistical methodologies. All of these charts can be jazzed up with scripts so that you can Drill down and filter through the data you want in order to get the right Business Intelligence feel to your work. Dundas supports the Data Cube, It supports Microsoft, Oracle, MySQL, EXCEL, it has export capabilities onto Excel, so those clients which prefer their data in Spreadsheets can manually export directly from the dashboard. Everything in Dundas is designed to give you the most professional feel possible at all times!

Minpunten: Dundas, for the good of it's users needs to publish more comprehensive educational equipment to train it's users, it is very hard to get to an expert level in Dundas without some help from your Friends in Dundas. I would love to see Dundas publish university style lectures, with step by step guides that show every aspect of the working sphere. With adequate educational material, one would be able to gain adept or even artisan status with the Tool on their own.