| O.S.A and O.F.A [message #92917] |
Thu, 14 March 2002 03:34  |
Sai Srinivas
Messages: 3
Registered: January 2002
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Junior Member |
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Hi,
I would like to know the differences between O.S.A and O.F.A .
thanks & regds
Sai Srinivas
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| Re: O.S.A and O.F.A [message #92924 is a reply to message #92917] |
Mon, 01 April 2002 19:20  |
ron
Messages: 50
Registered: July 1999
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Member |
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OFA is more about financials analysis info about a company, it gives reports based on time,account, directly related to all GL info.
OSA, is more about sales and related Order management and AR.
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| Re: O.S.A and O.F.A [message #92929 is a reply to message #92924] |
Wed, 17 April 2002 06:03 |
Mark Thompson
Messages: 6
Registered: April 2002
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Junior Member |
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OSA also doesn't provide any facility for user input, such as you would see with departmental budgeting, for instance. OSA is a very badly named product. I've seen it used as the backbone of a company's financial reporting applications, all the way down to full P&Ls and balance sheets. You are only limited in OSA by the fact that data can't come from users' fingers via the keyboard.
OSA has the capability of being completely loaded and populated from relational tables, using the RAM/RAA interface. OFA does not have that ability.
OSA also has built-in forecasting tools, which use the statistical forecasting methods built in to Express to allow the creation of trended forecasts. The same functionality would have to be custom coded into OFA.
OFA is probably a bit easier to manage if you really want to use a GUI interface. OSA can be loaded one of two ways. First, the aforementioned RAM/RAA solution, in which you create a data model from either a star schema or snowflake schema RDB, then use RAA to create the Express database for you. The second method is completely ASCII file based. Every scrap of information and structure in the database comes from a text file. That can be a bit cumbersome. OSA also doesn't allow for the intricate fine tuning that you can do with OFA, for that very reason.
If you can reasonably anticipate needing to have user input of data, choose OFA. If you have an existing relational data warehouse that you would like to see in a multidimensional tool, perhaps OSA would be the better choice.
I do this for a living. If I can be of service, please feel free to contact me.
Mark Thompson
mark@csthompson.com
972.679.8409
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