Transcript

We recently had the opportunity to create a commission modeling application for a client. Their existing solution is excel based distributed among many workbooks and consolidated in another workbook with many tabs. The source data is flowing in from CRM solutions for part of the work and Time Entry systems for other parts. The client's ambition is to enable people to model sales that they might close and see the impact on their pay. It is no secret to anyone that follows SSTC that we find Oracle’s Apex platform to be very productive. However, the client is an Office 365 user with good Excel expertise but no Oracle expertise. We did a very quick comparison to be able to judge our own speed of development as well as the utility for the client in building a Power BI solution and an Apex solution.

Comparison

Power BI Pros

Data Loading proved slightly easier in Power BI. It is more tolerant of data type issues, For example, you don’t have to take account of a pound symbol in a currency field.

Power BI implied date field and date hierarchy from a field name. I would have had to have built that is Apex.

Power BI makes obvious a range of connectors, including a Web Data Source for loading data directly from a web page.

If building in Apex, I would have to use other tools to do screen scraping, or move to API based connection.

Power BI already fits neatly into an Office 365 architecture.

Power BI Cons

Default UI styling is very much excel based as opposed to Web App based.

It is not a responsive design. Separate design work is needed for phone or tablet form factor.

Layout is surprisingly fiddly.

Manual data entry to maintain administrative data is rudimentary. I presume this is expected to be done by developing a power app, or form to collect the data.

Apex Pros

Once the data is loaded, Apex makes a pretty good guess at the Dashboard, Search and Reports that you need.

The graphical styling is very much a web application.

Apex guessed at a calendar representation for start dates, that seems to have utility that the client had not planned.

Apex design is responsive. It will work on tablets and phones without further development.

Data Entry screens are created automatically and have the same Web Application Feel.

Apex Cons

As stated above, slightly more cumbersome to get data in.

Apex would have to be configured to work with Office 365 authentication.

Apex is available on Oracle’s Free Tier. There are some limits on space on the Free Tier.

In Summary

Power BI is a reporting system with powerful analytics and some rudimentary data entry capability. Data Import is made very obvious.

Apex is a Web Development platform with great onboard analytics capability. It does not presume data will be imported.

Overlapping Magisteria

Power BI

Oracle APEX