SQL Server Business Intelligence 2015
These SQL Server business intelligence tools comprise open source and commercial products. Some are specifically targeted at Microsoft platforms, while others are platform agnostic.
Windward is ideal for commercial software (OEM), system integrator and enterprise developers who need to add Reporting and DocGen functionality to desktop, online, SaaS or mobile products. The .NET or Java report engines connect to virtually any data source and can be quickly integrated in 14 lines of code, meaning faster time to market. Windward enables design without restrictions through AutoTag, the Microsoft Office-based template design tool. Any user can create and rapidly revise templates, freeing up dev resources.
BIRT (free BI suite) is an open source software project that provides the BIRT technology platform to create data visualizations and reports that can be embedded into rich client and web applications, especially those based on Java and Java EE. BIRT is a top-level software project within the Eclipse Foundation.
InfoCaptor (commercial product) is an extremely competent product, capable of addressing many BI, data visualisation and analytics needs at a very modest price. Deployment can either be in-house or on the web, and in either case the interface is web based. This a pragmatic, ‘get-the-job-done’ solution without the surface gloss and high prices charged by other suppliers.
JasperReports (free BI suite) Server is a stand-alone and embeddable reporting server. It provides reporting and analytics that can be embedded into a web or mobile application as well as operate as a central information hub for the enterprise by delivering mission critical information on a real-time or scheduled basis to the browser, mobile device, printer, or email inbox in a variety of file formats. JasperReports Server is optimized to share, secure, and centrally manage your Jaspersoft reports and analytic views.
JReport from Jinfonet excels in embeddable reporting and data visualisation. It is used by some of the world’s largest businesses, typically to provide online reporting facilities to customers, but is also used in many businesses to provide information directly to employees and partners. At the current time, around two thirds of Jinfonet’s business comes from OEM, ISVs and other third parties who provide embedded intelligence in a variety of services and products. JReport supports dashboards, charts, reporting, and connects to a wide variety of data sources, including big data, relational databases and cloud based data.
Microsoft Power BI (commercial) provides collaboration and publishing enhancements to the BI facilities built in to the Office suite. The heavy work is done by Excel with extensions such as PowerPivot (for fast in-memory analysis across large data sets) and Power View (for visual data analysis).
myDBR (commercial reporting tool) is a web-based reporting system for relational databases that allows you build a feature rich, manageable and scalable reporting environment. myDBR manages the distribution and access rights automatically, so it also scales well to large scale installations. Users are able to access reports using just a web browser, no additional software installations is required.
Nevron Vision (commercial) is an advanced chart report system for SSRS 2005, 2008, 2008R2 and 2012. The suite is comprised of Chart and Gauge. Chart features 2D/3D charting types and an advanced axis model (multiple axes, axis docking and crossings, XML formatted titles, timeline support, automatic-crossable scale brakes in 2D and 3D, gridlines, ticks, stripes, sections, const lines and ranges, axis caps and intelligent non-overlapping axis labels), XYZ scatter charts and surface charts with hundreds of other chart types. The report item provides numerous editors, supporting easy modification of the chart appearance and customization all elements of your charts – quickly and completely visually.
Pentaho Community (open source BI suite) provides everything an organisation might need to address not only its reporting needs, but also data mining for predictive analytics applications. The skill level required to make it all work should not be underestimated, but this is the case with most open source solutions. Bells and whistles (Dashboards etc) require a move to the Enterprise Edition of Pentaho.
ReportServer (open source report server) provides an extremely flexible open source reporting and dashboard environment. It supports Eclipse Birt, JasperReports and SAP Crystal Reports reporting engines in addition to its own ad-hoc oriented reporting tools. The user interface is web based and it supports a wide range of admin tools.
SpagoBI (free BI suite) is essentially a very large collection of open source software brought together to create a broad business intelligence capability. In fact it goes beyond the traditional notion of BI to embrace domains such as data mining and BPM.
Stimulsoft Reports (commercial) product line is a suite of the .NET platform reporting components. The technologies supported in Stimulsoft Reports are Windows Forms, ASP.NET, MVC, WPF, Silverlight, HTML5. Developers can find the powerful report engine, interactive, intuitive and easy-to-use report designers and viewers. The reporting tools enable reports of any complexity. With exporting options users can export reports to Adobe PDF, Microsoft Office etc.