Product Review: Information Builders WebFOCUS 7.6: Industry Report

Product Review: Information Builders WebFOCUS 7.6

Product Type: Market Research Report
Published by: BARC
Published: April 2008
Product Code: R3485-17

Description

A well established production reporting tool that can not only access popular OLAP databases, but provides basic OLAP analysis on live data from a myriad of both modern and legacy sources.

This review covers WebFOCUS 7.6, a unique and now long-lived product which offers simple OLAP reporting capabilities.

WebFOCUS runs as a mid-tier server on J2EE platforms but unlike most BI products, Information Builders claim that this versatility means that a large proportion of its customers deploy the product on non-windows servers.

Without doubt, one of the key strengths of WebFOCUS is the vast range of data sources it can access. Using Information Builders' proprietary iWay adapters, the need for an intermediate data warehouse is bypassed.

In this 26-page review, extensively illustrated with screenshots and examples, we uncover the strengths and weaknesses while delving into some of the components of WebFOCUS such as:

Visual Discovery
Developer Studio
PowerPainter

The 'Factbase' section shows how we scored the product, along with detailed and helpful notes on many of the features and functionality of WebFOCUS.

Though WebFOCUS remains a relatively small player, it occupies a space of its own in the marketplace and may be worth considering if your reporting requirements necessitate access to a variety of data sources.

As always with The OLAP Report, this is a 100% unbiased, vendor-independent review.

Please note: The report file is password protected. Password will be delivered with PDF file. The PDF file may not be saved, however, one hard copy may be printed.

Table of Contents

1. Product overview
2. Licensing
3. Architecture and administration
4. Output formats
5. Active Reports
6. Publishing reports
7. The FOCUS language
8. Data access
9. Front-ends
10. Standard reporting
11. The Report Assistant
12. Developer Studio
13. Report Painter
14. PDF Layout Painter
15. Ad hoc reports
16. Matrix reports
17. OLAP-enabled reports
18. Prompting
19. PowerPainter
20. Charts
21. Visual Discovery
22. Conclusions and scores
23. Strengths and weaknesses
24. Similar products
25. Factbase (including scores)

Ordering and More Information

Price and Delivery Options

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