IR vs. WA vs. FR vs. Smart View

A number of products are currently available for reporting and analysis against the Hyperion Suite of products. Which tool is the right tool for me? The answer is probably not just one tool but at least two. Here is a high level matrix comparing the strengths of each of one of the tools:

	Interactive Reporting	Financial Reporting	Web Analysis	Smart View
Relational Data Source	X		(Technically, yes but not well)	Yes, OBIEE in v11.1.1
Essbase Data Source	(9.3.1)	X	X	X
Printable, Formatted Reports	X	X		X
Adhoc Analysis	X		X	X
Dashboarding	X		X
Charting	X	Yes, but not as good as the others	X	X
Web	X	X	X

So the big question, which of these tools will be around in the future? Financial Reporting - Yes. We're already hearing about a new tool Oracle Answers+ that will be the direction for advanced analytics and dashboarding. From what I've hear (I've haven't seen this product yet), it is going to be a great solution but it is not Hyperion ready just yet. Smart View - Yes.

So what about Interactive Reporting and Web Analysis? This is completely unofficial / my own opinion so please take that into consideration. IR will have lifetime support but I think we will see new features not added to this product in the future (not any time soon though). I think Web Analysis will be around until we see Answers+ matching the feature set of WA (which I think is a ways down the road).

A related question - Web Analysis and Interactive Reporting have many of the same capabilities. Which tool is the best? I have a separate blog entry addressing that question. Check it out.