On Thu, Jul 26, 2012 at 9:04 AM, Vincent Veyron <vv.lists@wanadoo.fr> wrote:
> Le mercredi 25 juillet 2012 à 10:41 -0700, Mark Phillips a écrit :
>> I am seeking suggestions for business intelligence and data mining tools compatible with postgresql.
>> A new manager at a client's shop is leaning toward the MS offerings. I would like to be able to speak to the issue.
>
> mmmmh..., I realize this will read like a wild exageration, but I
> sincerely doubt anybody pushing this type of solution can be reasoned.
>
> The money spent in licences alone would pay for scores of developpers to
> produce any kind of reporting you will need many times over (the data
> and its structure is what counts, reporting is easy if you have that)
>
> And that is probably small potatoes compared to the hours that the users
> will spend trying to have the mal-engineered thing output something.
>
> My guess is that your battle is political : a strong ally would be
> helpful.
Well, TBH, I wouldn't go that far. SQL server has some very nice OLAP
extensions to SQL (PIVOT, UNPIVOT, ROLLUP, etc)
that postgres doesn't have. SQL Server is expensive, but the costs are
typically reasonable compared to paying for developers: in software
development labor costs are very substantial (that's why I love this
job, heh). For an end to end BI stack microsoft is a decent choice
if (and only if) you're already heavily invested in the microsoft
platform; familiarity being the most important criteria.
In the same vein, Pentaho, BIRT, Jasper, etc are good choices if
you're a java shop.
(in my case, I'm doing almost 100% BI development now -- it's very
'hot' and I use 100% postgres, database driven, and it works great).
merlin