How to evaluate domestic reporting tools and Bi software

If there is any general software field, the technology of domestic products is better than that of foreign products , It's estimated that there are only report tools .

database 、 Operating system these familiar basic software , What is the status of domestic goods compared with foreign goods , We all know that ; development tool 、 compiler 、 Even browsers （ It depends on the kernel ） Far from it ; Word processing has good domestic software , But it can't be said to be better than foreign ones . Of course, there may be new products that are catching up and even overtaking in corners , But in areas where there are already enough user groups , It's too hard to find a better example of domestic software .

The difference is , Domestic reporting tools are much stronger than foreign competitive products , For more than ten years, foreign products have basically disappeared , There are only a few open source products left that can be mixed for free , Even many foreign products will take the initiative to admit that this is not working .

The reason here may be that foreigners have fewer complex statements , There should be less demand stimulus in this regard . This is indeed the case in Europe and the United States , But there are not many complex statements from the Japanese , There are no decent tools for the report . and ,Excel It's also made by Americans , There are also many functions to adapt to complex formats and calculation rules , Well done . Foreign reporting tools are not only complex reporting tools, but also have far less ability , Conventional report technology can not catch up with domestic software , Is comprehensively weak , It is almost impossible to find a function point that can drive with domestic products .

Whatever the reason , In the field of reporting tools, it is true that domestic software is far stronger than foreign products .

It is necessary to mention the founder of domestic reporting tools Retouch report . A dozen years ago , A new model is proposed for Runqian report , It realizes the unification of report calculation and format , At the same time, it solves the difficulties of drawing and calculation , Increase the development efficiency by an order of magnitude ; And use pure Java Completed the development of report tool , Adapted to the popular WEB Application trend , So as to establish the technical advantage of foreign products . At present, it is a better report tool for complex reports （ All domestic products ） Are using this model and similar technical systems .

report form BI No separation , After talking about the report tool, you will naturally say BI Software . here BI It means in a narrow sense BI, That is, interactive analysis products based on multidimensional analysis , It is mainly to make summary statistics according to various dimensions .

BI It is the strength of foreign products , Foreign report products have been basically destroyed , But abroad, which is active at home BI There are still many products , Especially popular in recent years “ agile BI” Concept , It seems that there are more and more popular trends .

However , In this field , The technical content of domestic software is also stronger ！

domestic BI product , stay WEB adaptability 、 Enterprise level technology architecture 、 Compatibility and other aspects are stronger than foreign countries BI Software . There are many international brands BI The product can only be used in Windows Work under the , Only in the last two years has Linux edition , Still bumping ; Support for databases is often done to death , Slightly less common databases may not support or support incomplete functions ;WEB The adaptability of is also not good , Browsers are not well supported, and some even do not directly support . Sometimes I really wonder how the technology is so poor , If domestic products are made like this , It's impossible to mix in the market .

Abroad BI In fact, the products generally sell well in China （ At least they've been selling well for a while ）, But very few are well used .N Years ago, the agents of these foreign products had shelfware That's what I'm saying , It's not selling software, It is shelfware, Put it on the shelf when you buy it .

It seems that foreign countries with such poor technology BI But in Europe and America , Not only does it sell well , From the forum, it works well , What's the matter ？

foreign BI product , Users are business people , The usage scenario is often the desktop , At most, at the departmental level . The business personnel analyze some data by themselves , amount to Excel An upgrade of . This usage is indeed sufficient “ agile ”, Often you don't need a database , Toss about Linux Servers are also redundant .

Domestic is different ,BI The system is a large enterprise application , from IT Department led construction , The multidimensional analysis interface is built on the browser , The whole is a big system , The background is a unified data warehouse . This requires the use of BI The software should have better integration , It can support large database in the background 、unix/linux These operating systems , The front end should be able to support the browser interface . In this mode , It is not surprising that foreign products are not acclimatized in technology , Because people didn't design for this kind of scene . Bought foreign... For various reasons BI product , When trying to implement into an enterprise application , It often makes the integrator half dead , Swearing often happens . Build enterprise class BI The system is used abroad BI The product is asking for hardship . however , If you take foreign BI The product is used as stand-alone software on the desktop , That's good . Abroad BI The product appears to be of poor technology , Mainly in enterprise applications , The competitive point of desktop applications is not technology .

At home BI And abroad BI, It's just two species ！ Enterprise class BI Extremely heavy , and “ agile ” The word has nothing to do with .

There is no desktop in China BI Market ？

There are also , More and more over the years , But mainly private enterprises , Not yet IT The mainstream of buying . These users do often use foreign BI product .

The domestic mainstream demand is still enterprise level BI, As a result, most BI Manufacturers have also made products like this . Abroad XXX Good product , There are some BI Manufacturers are aiming to become “ China's XXX” To conduct business under the banner of , But when it comes to customers , They have been driven to the enterprise level by the ruthless market BI I'm on my way ,BI Bounded “ China's XXX” Never appeared .

Which side of the demand is wrong ？

Our country ！

Most Chinese enterprises don't need BI. Insufficient competition in large industries , Lying down also makes money , Lack of motivation for analysis . So-called BI, Often it's just to let the leadership see the dazzling effect , Mostly at the macro level , It can't be said that it's completely useless for decision-making , but BI The auxiliary business decision-making should be relatively micro , What price is good to sell 、 What kind of people are willing to buy 、…, This is the task of the front-line business supervisor , It's not the task of leaders . Private enterprises compete fully , But there is not much data when the scale is small , I can't do it BI; Slightly larger ones are actually in use , That is, the domestic desktop just mentioned BI market , such BI In order to achieve the auxiliary role of decision-making at the micro level .

Another reason is that the skills of front-line personnel are also insufficient , Many concepts and operations are not well understood , Free analysis is not very useful , The result is that fixed reports are useful , Because it only needs to input a few parameters （ There are some “ China's XXX” At first, it does not provide complex report function , But they are also forced to make up this link in the competition , Instead, claim that you have done a good job in the report ）. Investigation of domestic customers BI It is common to pay special attention to the drag and drop method rather than the data analysis function , Many foreign front-line analysts can even write their own SQL Prepare the data .

Preach and deceive in many ways , Many organizations also believe that BI You can make scientific decisions .BI Often for the sake of going up , from IT Department to lead , Or the headquarters business department promotes , Not how strong the demand of front-line business personnel is . At this time, create enterprise class BI That's the normal result .

technically , Multidimensional analysis in the browser is also a matter of face , It looks amazing , It doesn't work . The result of allowing arbitrary dragging is often that the background can't hold , Xiao zecaton , It's too serious for anyone to use . This is a BI The data warehouse problem that the product itself can't do , The data warehouse can't , You can't hold on to anyone by making blind inquiries . And the desktop is OK , It's none of your business to kill yourself .

Enterprises BI It's no use ？

Of course not .

With the normalization of the market , Enterprises BI Our market is still promising , But it needs to be led by software developers with rich industry experience , Not universal BI Manufacturers do . Only with industry experience can we know what business users care about most 、 What parameters and indicators to live or die , The interface will be convenient . For example, there are many tag attributes （ Value , Is the client a college student , Do you have a credit card ）, The number may reach hundreds or thousands , Universal BI Will treat these as dimensions , The interface will be difficult to use . Developers with industry experience will reasonably classify and even link labels according to business , It will be much easier to use . Interactive interface supported by industry experience , The corresponding background calculation is designed , Controllable amount of calculation , The customized interface can also limit the actions with huge amount of calculation , In this way, the data warehouse can also support . Enterprises BI It can also provide data preparation function , Allow business personnel to take out some data for further flexible analysis on the desktop , But do a good job in desensitization , This also requires industry knowledge .

With the blessing of industry knowledge , Enterprises BI It is possible to change the face goods facing the macro into the front-line operation auxiliary tools facing the micro , Even if there is no special change in the technical means used . Enterprises based on industry experience BI Solve the query and filtering of large amount of data , With a flexible desktop BI Solve the flexible operation of small amount of data , That's what makes sense BI Application scenarios .

Now many industry customers have begun to do so , No longer directly purchase general purpose products BI Software .

however , As mentioned earlier ,BI（ And reporting tools ） There are still some technical barriers , Companies mainly engaged in industry application software development may not be very good at , Business knowledge, though , Also more clearly understand the needs of users , It still takes a lot of technology to complete BI System , It is also a matter of high cost and high risk to realize these basic technologies completely by yourself .

Now we need to mention the moistening report again , current A fairly complete... Has been developed in the Runqian report BI Basic function , And open source these codes .

The vast majority of domestic products on the market BI The software will be submitted as an independent platform , Have their own user and resource management mechanism , There's no integrability （ Not to mention open source ）. Industry software developers can only do some configuration on the side , And cannot be deeply controlled and transformed , It's hard to integrate your own industry knowledge . And moisten and dry BI The design orientation of is middleware （ Like its reporting tools ）, Therefore, it has very good integration , And it's open source （ Of course, it's free ）, It's easy to transform . These powerful and rich foundations BI Skills can be easily opened to application software manufacturers , Seamlessly embedded into their systems , So as to develop its own enterprises with low cost and high efficiency BI Application software .

Moisten the report data

• Runqian report official website
• Moistening Report Download

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