Why is Stack Overflow so negative of late?
I hate to pile on, but I couldn't resist summarizing the problem.
And I apologize ahead of time for any potentially offensive language that I might use.
Basically there are 4 camps of users on Stack Overflow:
The "caretakers" who want to keep the...
@ConcernedOfTunbridgeWells something about not being able to do email lists, and it's hard to see what goes where, and SSRS doesn't support authenticated SMTP
Decent best-of-breed reporting tools tend to be quite pricey. Some options are: Cognos: everything that opens and shuts. Sphincter-puckeringly expensive Qlikview: particularly strong on interactive dashboards. Cheaper than Cognos, but that's like saying 'Cheaper than a Rolls Royce' Business Objects: Good bursting features (delivering parameterised reports to a user base). Cheaper than Cognos Tableau: New-ish but pretty good. Quite pricey. MicroStrategy: Very heavyweight system with everything - and I mean everything - that opens and shuts. The Oracle of reporting tools. Has sort of lo…
@JNK If there's just one issue I'd consider working around it. Moving off SSRS will entail re-jigging your reports. Also, folks with SSRS experience are easier and cheaper to hire than Qlikview or Cognos devs.
@JNK I don't know how open Business Objects are these days (now SAP bought them). They used to be notable for good delivery features.
Note that I have no idea OTOH whether any of them support SMTP authentication. You'd have to bail up the vendors and ask some hard questions.
@JNK If you have any significant portfolio of incumbent reports it would be a lot of shagging about to move off SSRS. A SMTP relay server shouldn't be any great hardship (financially or otherwise). There are several good SMTP servers in the open-source world and even if you're a die-hard Microsoft shop I would bet quite a bit of money that another Exchange server would be quite a lot cheaper than any of the reporting tools I listed - let alone the cost of migration.
Really, there are (IMO) four reasons to move off SSRS: o Better self-service reporting capabilities o Interactive dashboards (although MS Powerview does this now if you have Sharepoint) o Bursting (better in 2012 but still a bit crap) o You want a better front-end for SSAS than MS provides out of the box (this is really a special case of 1)
Why is Stack Overflow so negative of late?
I hate to pile on, but I couldn't resist summarizing the problem.
And I apologize ahead of time for any potentially offensive language that I might use.
Basically there are 4 camps of users on Stack Overflow:
The "caretakers" who want to keep the...
