Row Blows Up In Data Mining Field

Rival suppliers Business Objects and Cognos have locked horns over which offers the best product

Cognos and Business Objects (BO) were involved in a war of words last week after the Canadian-based developer unveiled its data mining product one week after its rival.

Cognos? Scenario is based on Angoss International?s online analytical processing (Olap) engine, while BO?s is based on Isoft?s engine. Both suppliers claim their offering is the easier to use and the more integrated with their existing query and report writing tools. But neither is likely to have much appeal outside the suppliers? own installed bases.

Charles Nicholls, BO marketing director, said: ?We have one integrated product, Cognos has three. You need to perform three or four different executables to do a macro, whereas with ours, you only need one. Cognos is just trying to copy us, but we?ve made ours easy to use for business users, not analysts.?

John Farley, Cognos product marketing manager, retorted: ?They are remarkably similar products, but it comes down to implementation and Scenario is more integrated with our products than BO?s. The original Angoss product is quite complex ? we?ve spent a lot of time making it easy to use.?

He claimed Cognos? various decision support tools are aimed at different types of users, while Scenario is aimed at report analysts, who want to examine cause and effect relationships. ?It?s a different audience for us rather than a new market,? Farley said.