I'm trying to find out what is the best reporting tool to use with a Baan database in terms of cost effectiveness. We went live with LN mid 2008 and made the mistake of buying Infor's Enterprise Analytics Package. It did not offer much, and came with a data warehouse made with JDE tables and the expense and complexity of Cognos 8 BI to run it with. It has not been a quick nor easy solution.

I have heard interesting things about cyberquery's eCQ. Is there anything else that is easy to set up a model with a BAAN DB

:confused:

We are using Business Objects which has a broad suite of tools to develop and distribute the end results. We looked at Cyberquery, but they were unable to leverage off our Crystal Reports as they originally indicated they could. Since Crystal Reports is owned by BO it was an better fit for us because we could use reports we currently had as a basis for our first set of dashboards.

We're starting out with Pentaho, so far not bad (www.pentaho.org). I've played with BIRT which is OK too but has no front end for the users (other than via webtop homepages which seems like a bit of an overkill.)

Text handling seems like its going to be the main problem for me. I'm hoping BIRT and the Baan integration will play well with Pentaho.

I recently heard about a new report designer 'Form Designer' for Baan and ERP LN from a company called Hidox in Holland. http://www.hidox.nl/en/

It seems to properly integrate with Baan/LN. We'll be seeing a LN customer demo at the UK Baan usergroup meeting on Thursday.

Is there anything else that is easy to set up a model with a BAAN DB

:confused:

For Baan IV something that's very easy to setup is ERPJewels . It can be installed and confirgured in less
than half day and can start giving results from day one. It accesses baan db natively with all its advantages (http://erpjewels.com/nativedatadict.pdf)

ERP Ln can import Baan IV exports and can be used . All the tables are created in tudll module 900 series .
There are 2-3 Baan IV domains missing there which can well be given separately.

Hi,
during my search on BI Tools i came across some of the aforementioned tools. Maybe my experiences can help someone.

Hidox:
This is what it mainly states, a 'Form Designer' which makes your Baan Reports look nicely (especially the outgoing ones). It is slightly integrated in Baan (part of it is coded in Baan 4GL in Baan itself). The logic of the Baan Reports is not touched.
I had a speech with the developer during an event of the german DBUG talking about the Integration of non Baan Data into the reports, which seems possible but is not the original intention of the tool.
Nice Tool, but not really a BI-Solution.

We're starting out with Pentaho, so far not bad (www.pentaho.org). I've played with BIRT which is OK too but has no front end for the users (other than via webtop homepages which seems like a bit of an overkill.)

BIRT:
I use BIRT in another project for reporting requirements.
From my point of view BIRT is a very flexible and powerfull reporting tool for creating advanced reports. F.i. you can integrate javascript and java code in your reports, use crosstabs and integrated charts (nearly all types you can think of). It is also possible to build advanced environments by creating reusable elements in librarys and templates.
Furthermore they have a ready to use frontend to visualize and export reports (pdf, xls, doc, ppt) implemented as a J2EE application (the so called BIRT Web Viewer).
But you can also integrate Birt into your own Web App or Java Application.
I think what pcole means by 'no frontend for users' is the ability to look at your report repository by means of a real BI-Server. So that's true.

More on the integration of BIRT into Baan below.

Pentaho (based on the community edition):
The mentioned Pentaho Suite is a set of tools to build 'real' BI-Solutions.
The central Tool is the so called BI Platform or BI-Server which is a J2EE Web application. It is the central framework which provides services for authentication, rights mangement, scheduling, bursting and other infrastructural services.
The tools around this platform are:
Pentaho Reporting (aka jfree Report)
Pentaho Analysis (aka Mondrian)
Pentaho Data Integration (aka Kettle)
Pentaho Data Mining (aka Weka)
and some more to glue the single elements together.
By the way, you can integrate BIRT reports into Pentaho, as the platform is build in a way to plug in other Solutions.
The paradigm of Pentaho is to define the requirements of a BI-Solution and then use the different tools to put together a solution.

From my point of view the Pentho thing needs a lot of work to implement a consistent BI-Application (even if you pay for building and implementation / Enterprise Edition).

Integration into Baan:
The Birt integration into Baan is done by Infor in the following way (from an Infor webinar on that topic):
There are two types of reporting. Push and Pull reporting.
Push reporting means that the original Baan Report layouts are converted to a BIRT Reportdesign.
So in the report design you have the well known before.report, before.field, detail, ... sections.
You can now format the elements, add new elements and so on.
This report design is then saved in the Baan DD.
Now when you print a Baan Report all the logic of the report is executed like normal. You just choose a special device called BIRT, that serves Baan to generate a XML-Data-File which serves as the Datasource for the Report design file. So no database access from BIRT here.
This is OK for transactional reports.
Pull reporting on the other hand means that the Datasource is defined in the report design of BIRT itself. In that case you go directly to the database to access your data. Here you are free to develop in Birt what you want.
Not applicable for Reports with application logic of course.

Infor Integration Services:
Recently i attended an Infor Webinar on the technical aspects of Infor MyDay (aka role-based Homepages).
During this session there was shown how Integration Services will work. AFAIK LN is build in a way that if special transactions are fired in LN (f.i. a sales order is maintained ) then LN sends a message to Integration Services to update the Tables in the Data warehouse, so that the reports, charts, alerts or whatever is build on these tables can reflect these changes.
As i understood right, Infor open SOA is used for that.

So as a result:
I don't think there is a 'right' BI-Tool for Baan.
It depends very much on what your requirements are and what you are willing to invest (money and manpower).

As i wrote in Title, just my 2 cent.

Andreas

If you are using MS SQL - Reporting services works very well (for us at least).

- Andrew

True, reporting services must work on SQL . We have worked on it in limited way primarily because operational and analytical people needing reports / MIS use Baan. So by using reporting services, it was not going to reduce the license requirement. And at the same time there was never a case we could not deliver what users wanted in Baan. So there was limited incentive looking elsewhere for reporting.

If you are using MS SQL - Reporting services works very well (for us at least).

- Andrew

We just move to SQL from informix...

how can i get most from sql...

BI Reportingtool instantolap.

instantOLAP is a lightweight and scalable Reporting- and OLAP-system which combines a modern Web 2.0 frontend - the instantOLAP Portal - with a powerful integrated OLAP engine.

information to www.stelsa.de or www.instantolap.com

bye
Steffen

Hi Andrew,

you are looking for the information to instantolap.

http://www.instantolap.net/docs/instantOLAP_manual_2_5_0_en.pdf
Do you have interest to the software ?


-------------
Steffen
www.stelsa.de

Hi,

Did you already have a look at www.iqbs.nl (http://www.iqbs.nl)? Please do that. We deliver iqbs 2009, a microsoft 2008 based Business Intelligence solution. It is a complete BI solution, included ETL, datawarehouse and a (wss) portal on top. This multilingual solution works for Baan IV, Baan V and Infor ERP LN.

For more information please mail info@iqbs.nl.

Succes,
Cris Kaai
iqbs

Please can you tell me if this product is integrated with baan.

Let me know who is the enterprise that sell ans what is te cost?

thanks