TIBCO Jaspersoft BI Enterprise Edition (referred to as "Jaspersoft" hereafter) is a competitive alternative to InetSoft's reporting sub-product, Style Report Enterprise, but not its all-inclusive data intelligence platform, Style Intelligence, or the dashboard and visual analytics sub-product, Style Scope.
Jaspersoft's application offers strong pixel-perfect, paginated reporting functionality similar to InetSoft's, but for web-based dashboards the capabilities are quite primitive.
Jaspersoft can be viewed as an enhancement to the JasperReports paginated report application. For web based visualizations, Jaspersoft renders reports as elements. This architecture severely limits advanced visualization and its associated data preparation.
For paginated reporting, Jaspersoft offers wide data source access, data mashup and transformation capabilities that come close to InetSoft's capabilities. However, for dashboards, that capability is not available, and instead only a single source with already transformed data, such as a data warehouse, is supported.
SQL queries and Domains (data models) are the data access pathway. This requires high skills and greatly limits data preparation and transformation capabilities. The only means for end users to create new content is through the Ad hoc Editor using Domains by selecting pre-defined data fields. This hardcoded data layer essentially limits users to viewers whereas InetSoft empowers even business users to do data mashups with any data, even uploaded spreadsheets in a graphical data manipulation environment.
Jaspersoft runs outside of the big data environment, connecting to and transporting data to visualize it, which is very inefficient, duplicating hardware requirements and introducing significant latency. InetSoft installs inside a Spark cluster to take advantage of distributed processing where the data resides.
Jaspersoft supports a few basic chart types, not nearly as many as InetSoft. Most notably, geographic mapping is not supported. Brushing is not supported, where highlighting a data point in one chart can display its related data in all charts. Bookmarks, or personalized views of chart binding and filter selections are not supported. Input element types are not as wide or interactive as InetSoft's. Jaspersoft does not have dynamic selection lists or range sliders. There is no "show data" option that allows a user to view and export a table of a chart's underlying data.
Jaspersoft does not offer a powerful web-based designer like InetSoft's. Rather, it relies on the desktop iReport Designer or Jasper Studio to create a regular report to serve as dashlet, or dashboard chart. This requires a totally different skillset and limits users from developing analytic skills.
When composing a dashboard consisting of multiple charts, they are not automatically interconnected so filtering in one chart applies to the others. A tedious process of manually selecting fields to synchronize for each chart is required. It is not possible to modify the visual properties of as many charting and filter elements as InetSoft allows.
Customization of the color palette of a chart requires scripting which is many times more difficult than using InetSoft's point and click ability to choose among palettes or specific colors.
Jaspersoft's user interface and default chart design styles are very dated and make it difficult to design visually appealing, modern-looking visualizations. There are design limitations such as for the use of images. They can only be referenced via a URL and are not insertable via upload.
The export of a dashboard is not faithful to the design seen in a browser, whereas InetSoft produces exports that look just like the web-based versions. There is no ad hoc email-to function.
Jaspersoft requires a native app download. InetSoft utilizes HTML5 for universal device access with no client app maintenance overhead, yet supports design layout control for various form factor display sizes.
Despite positioning the solution as an embedding one, embedding Jaspersoft is more difficult than InetSoft. It requires coding several lines in a given page. This is in contrast to InetSoft's support of iframes that permit a non-developer to embed visualizations in a web page with one line of html.
Jaspersoft has no ability to write back data to a database source, while InetSoft has the capability built-in.
InetSoft supports machine learning via Spark. Jaspersoft does not.
InetSoft is a pioneer in delivering easy, agile, and robust business intelligence software that makes it possible for organizations and solution providers of all sizes to deploy or embed full-featured business intelligence solutions. Application highlights include visually-compelling and interactive dashboards that ensure greater end-user adoption plus pixel-perfect report generation, scheduling, and bursting. InetSoft's patent pending Data Block™ technology enables productive reuse of queries and a unique capability for end-user defined data mashup.
This capability combined with efficient information access enabled by InetSoft's visual analysis technologies allows maximum self-service that benefits the average business user, the IT administrator, and the developer. InetSoft was rated #1 in Butler Analytics Business Analytics Yearbook, and InetSoft's BI solutions have been deployed at over 5,000 organizations worldwide, including 25% of Fortune 500 companies, spanning all types of industries.
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