DV Comparison: Qlikview, Spotfire, Tableau, MS BI Stack

Published the comparison of 4 leading DV Products, see http://wp.me/PCJUg-1T

I did not included into comparison the 5th leading product – Visokio’s Omniscope, because it has very limited scalability due the specifics of it’s implementation: Java does not allow to visualize too much data. Among factors to considered when comparing DV tools:

– memory optimization [Qlikview is the leader in in-memory columnar database technology];
– load time [I tested all products above and PowerPivot is the fastest];
– memory swapping [Spotfire is only who can use a disk as a virtual memory, while Qlikview limited by RAM only];
– incremental updates [Qlikview probably the best in this area];
– thin clients [Spotfire has the the best THIN/Web/ZFC (zero-footprint) client, especially with their recent release of Spotfire 3.2 and Spotfire Silver];
– thick clients [Qlikview has the best THICK client] ,
– access by 3rd party tools [PowerPivot’s integration with Excel 2010, SQL Server 2008 R2 Analysis Services and SharePoint 2010 is a big attraction];
– interface with SSAS cubes [PowerPivot has it, Tableau has it, Omniscope will have it very soon, Qlikview and Spotfire do not have it],
– GUI [3-way tie, it is heavily depends on personal preferences, but in my opinion Qlikview is more easy to use than others];
– advanced analytics [Spotfire 3.2 is the leader here with its integration with S-PLUS and support for IronPython and other add-ons]
– the productivity of developers involved with tools mentioned above. In my experience Qlikview is much more productive tool in this regard.