Re: Business Objects

In article <773102319snz_at_aboy.demon.co.uk>, MarkB_at_aboy.demon.co.uk (M a r k) says:
>
>In article <2uv5d5$b85_at_raffles.technet.sg>
> mincomkl_at_solomon.technet.sg "Kenneth Leow Kok Siong" writes:
>
>> I would like to find out if anyone out there has used Business Objects
>> on Oracle 6 / 7. Any comments that you can offer?
>>
>> Many thanks,
>>
>> Kenneth Leow
>> mincomkl_at_solomon.technet.sg
>>
>
>I played with it for a while, and it seems to me that its weakness
>is that it assumes a perfectly Third-Normal-Form database. In nine
>years in the business, I have yet to see a perfectly TNF database.
>I also seem to remember that outer-joins blew its tiny mind.
>
>It's the kind of thing that'll have your Managing Director tumescent
>with glee, though. Just let him play with it long enough to
>get interested in what Oracle can *really* do, then threaten to
>quit unless you get a substantial raise.
>
>M
>--
>-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> MarkB_at_aboy.demon.co.uk
>Lyric Quiz of the Week: "Even Presidents have newspaper lovers.
> Ministers go crawling under covers."

We use Business Objects against both Oracle 6 and 7.

My general comment is that it a very good tool and has saved our IT group a lot of work in developing reports and makes the 'end-user' feel in control of their data.

Yes it does like your database to be 'well designed' and we have come up against designs which have problems. Most problems can be resolved by using views, etc. Its usually easy to find a query which will perform badly on any of these 'generic' database query tools.

I would recommend you look at this tool, at the time we selected it (mid '93) nothing even came close to matching its power.

Warning : they currently licence on a named user basis, not concurrent.

Good luck
Steve Langmead
sjla_at_chevron.com Received on Tue Jul 05 1994 - 14:31:48 CEST