Oracle Financials Cloud is great for enterprises struggling to get all their financial data in one place. The application, in essence, helps companies keep track of revenue and expenses at the organizational level.

Be it accounting, payables or receivables, cash flows, asset or lease management, purchase orders or invoices, Oracle Financials Cloud enables the Finance departments of enterprise companies to stay on top of all this information from the convenience of a browser.

The challenge, however, is the reporting part. Oracle Financials Cloud is part of the Fusion Cloud ERP suite of applications, which comes bundled with its inbuilt reporting module, Oracle Transactional Business Intelligence (OTBI). 

OTBI is excellent for creating a quick view of the Financials Cloud data (that you wish to analyze) in table form but falls short of user expectations in interactive data visualization and self-service front. This problem forces Financials Cloud users to avoid OTBI and use a different data visualization tool, such as Power BI, for reporting. However, these users rely heavily on manual Excel data export to move the Financials Cloud data to Power BI.

Are you wondering if there is any connector to get the Financials Cloud data directly in Power BI? There are two connectors: BI Connector and CData Connect Cloud.

In this whitepaper, we’ll compare both these tools quickly to help you choose the best connector for your use case.

Ok, let’s get started!

Power BI to Oracle Financials Cloud: BI Connector or CData Connect Cloud Comparison Table

Below is the comparison table, which we will explain with a short summary below:

Criteria	BI Connector	CData Connect Cloud
Connector niche	Oracle-focused connector	Oracle is just one among 100s of other data sources supported
Data access	Fusion Database data and OTBI data	Limited to data provided in Financial Cloud’s Rest API views
Implementation and Security	On-premise BI Connector team cannot view your Oracle credentials	Cloud Your Oracle credentials are saved in the cloud
Usage Restrictions	No row limits No connection restrictions	Limited to 10 million rows (in Standard plan) Restricted to 5 connections (in Standard plan)
Support	Free Onboarding and support (including the trial users)	No onboarding support; premium support is additionally charged

Now, let’s dive into the details!

Connector niche

BI Connector, a product of Guidanz Inc., has been solely focused on connecting Power BI and Tableau to Oracle BI applications for over a decade.

The team at the BI Connector knows how Oracle Fusion ERP applications work with OTBI and how to get data from the Fusion Database (which powers your Financials Cloud instance) to Power BI.

The BI Connector, which has been a Power BI certified connector since 2019, works with both the Power BI Desktop, Service, and the Report Server (the On-prem version of Power BI Service).

The CData Connect Cloud is a connector developed by CData. This connector is also Power BI certified and works with both Power BI Desktop and Service.

However, the CData Connect Cloud is not an Oracle-focused product. Oracle is just one of the 100s of other applications that CData Connect Cloud supports connecting to. The lack of focus in Oracle is evident in the connector’s inability to get the data directly from the Oracle Fusion database, which will be covered in depth in the section below titled “Data Access”.

Data Access

Now, let’s compare BI Connector and CData Cloud Connect in terms of what data you can access from Oracle Financials Cloud from Power BI.

With BI Connector, you can connect directly to the Oracle Fusion Database via the Data Models in the BI Publisher server. This means you can easily create a model of the data (you want to analyze in Power BI) directly from the Fusion database. This model is first created on the BI Publisher server. Then, you can easily connect to that Data Model from Power BI via the BI Connector. Further, you can connect to the OTBI Analysis reports with the BI Connector.

Also, with BI Connector, all operations are read-only, meaning you can’t modify or delete your existing Oracle data.

In the case of CData Connect Cloud, there are no options to fetch the data directly from your Oracle Fusion database or the OTBI Analysis reports. Instead, CData provides you with access to the REST API views. It’s hard to find which Views have the columns you want to analyze in Power BI. If more than one view is involved, you will spend more time on the data modeling part in Power BI to shape the data to the form you want it to be.

In addition, with the CData Connect Cloud, the users can utilize the Oracle stored procedures and unintentionally modify or delete their existing Oracle data.

Implementation and Security

The next critical aspect of comparison is the Implementation and security aspects of both connectors. The BI Connector is entirely an on-premise application and can be implemented at an Enterprise scale within 1 hour. 

In terms of Security, the BI Connector team cannot view your Oracle data, either. In other words, BI Connector does not move your Oracle data to its own staging servers to facilitate the connection from Power BI.

On the other hand, the CData Connect Cloud is a cloud application, and the application can work as expected only if the Oracle Fusion Cloud credentials are stored in the cloud to facilitate the connection.

Usage Restrictions

Oracle Financials Cloud has the data of all your company’s transactions, which could be in millions in number. The Financial teams often require a full view of the data to gather valuable insights and convert them into strategic decisions.

The BI Connector does not impose any row limit on the Oracle Financials data you see in Power BI. Though applying filters and narrowing down the data needed is a best practice when using Oracle Financials Cloud as a data source, the connector does not stop you from viewing all your data in Power BI if the need demands it.

Further, in light of the Oracle-imposed API Constraints and memory limitations, the BI Connector also has the necessary provisions to help you stay within those constraints and limitations while enabling you to get all the data you need into Power BI.

Also, the number of Oracle Financials Cloud instances you connect to using the BI Connector is unlimited. Many companies have multiple Financials Cloud instances, such as dev, test, and prod. With BI Connector, you can connect to all those instances without any limits for your Development and Testing projects as well based on your needs.

The CData Connect Cloud, on the other hand, has a row limit of 10 million rows per month (for its standard plan). The row limit applies to all the data sources (and not exclusively to Oracle Financials Cloud) in your CData Connect Cloud account. Further, with each CData Connect Cloud account, you can make only a total of 5 connections (For example, connecting to Test and Prod instances of a single Financials Cloud account is counted as 2 as the URLs will be different) under the Standard plan.

Further, the Oracle Financials Cloud connector is classified as a Premium connector in CData. Hence, even if you purchase the Standard plan, you would have to pay an additional price to use this premium connector as an add-on.

Support

All BI Connector subscriptions include unlimited support, and users are not charged additional fees. BI Connector also provides a free onboarding service for trial users. During the Onboarding, the team at BI Connector will connect with users in a virtual meeting and help them automate their first dashboard with Financials Cloud data in Power BI Service.

The BI Connector has a support portal with detailed documentation for every need, whether installing or configuring the connector. The users can also write an email to [email protected], which automatically creates a ticket for them in the Support Portal.

The entire BI Connector team is comprised of Oracle connectivity experts, and hence, most tickets are resolved via email on the same business day. If necessary, the BI Connector team will also meet virtually with users to troubleshoot problems in a screen-sharing session. The first response time is usually within 1 business day, and the typical response time for critical scenarios is 24 hours, even for tickets filed on non-business days.

The CData Connect Cloud has a Knowledge base documentation available for free for the users. There are no dedicated Onboarding services. The CData team offers unlimited email support in all subscriptions, but no timelines are given on when to expect a response. There’s a Premium Support option that offers phone support and priority resolution with a 24-hour response time, but it is additionally charged. Further, as CData Connect Cloud connects to a wide variety of data sources (with just one of them being Oracle Financials Cloud), it’s evident that not all members of their Support team are experts in Oracle connectivity, unlike the team at BI Connector.

Conclusion

So, are you at a crossroads in choosing between BI Connector and CData Connect Cloud for your Oracle Financials Cloud reporting in Power BI? 

Well, the CData is the best choice if the following 3 conditions are met:

1. You can confine your Financials Cloud reporting requirements within CData’s usage restrictions.
2. You can manage using the REST API views (instead of directly connecting to the data in the Oracle Fusion database).
3. Your company’s Security team is okay with using a cloud-based connector that saves your Oracle credentials on the cloud.

The BI Connector is the best choice even if one of the above three conditions is unmet. Click the banner to start your journey!