InetSoft's StyleBI vs. iDashboards

Differentiating Features

Enterprise Data Mashup - InetSoft is built upon a patented enterprise data mashup platform. Enterprise data mashup refers to the ability to pull practically any type of data from any location and mash it up on the fly to create a virtual data model that consists of reusable data blocks that can be queried in real-time from dashboards, reports and 3rd-party applications. iDashboards can only query data from heterogeneous data sources.

Self-Service - InetSoft's data mashup functionality is available to both business and IT users over the web, which helps to maximize self-service. Through a drag-and-drop design interface, business users can create interactive visual analyses, dashboards, and reports to answer unanticipated questions without IT's help. In contrast, any unanticipated data manipulation or dashboard changes in iDashboards requires IT staff to make modifications.

Data Connectivity - iDashboards has out-of-the-box connection capabilities for relational databases through JDBC or ODBC, and supports spreadsheets only on a windows server.  InetSoft is able to connect to the aforementioned data sources and also supports POJO, text, Web Services (SOAP), Java APIs, SAP, and others.  Additionally, InetSoft’s data modeling features provide a toolkit for visually building data models and data queries to extract information from diverse data sources.

Data Caching - InetSoft's data caching architecture delivers massive query performance boosts by caching data viewed by end users. iDashboards also provides a caching feature. InetSoft utilizes columnar database, Hadoop and Map Reduce technologies to store and query the cache in parallel across one or more servers. iDashboards utilizes only columnar database technology to store and query the cache on a single iDashboards server. 

Full Spectrum Analytics & Reporting - Like iDashboards, InetSoft features visualization technologies as the foundation for interactive exploration and discovery. But unlike iDashboards, InetSoft doesn’t stop at interactive visualization but includes very sophisticated reporting capabilities. Information publishing and dissemination often require reports with codified, sophisticated business logic and/or pixel perfect formatting. Advanced features include scheduling, archiving, versioning and auditing. InetSoft integrates visualization into all modes of information delivery which unifies analysis, reporting and dashboards into one seamless environment.