member of the OTN forums - Russ Proudman. See this link for the actual article.
The table of differences has some errors - that I am more than happy to point out :) The first "yes/no" is for "Desktop", the sec0nd for "Plus", and the third for "Viewer". Also, these comments are based on a very quick pass of the list, so I may have missed some errors out...
- View Query With Snapshot Data No No No - I don't know what Russ means by "snapshot" data, but you can have Discoverer run off scheduled workbooks, so this line is not entirely correct then.
- Deliverable As Portlet No No No - every Discoverer worksheet can be delivered as a portlet; the component - Desktop, Plus, Viewer is irrelevant here.
- Apply Parameters To Worksheet Yes Yes No - of course parameters can be applied to Viewer, or am I missing something here?
- Save The Workbook Yes Yes No - worksheets can be saved in Viewer also (shall provide a link in the next post).
- Export To XML ? Yes ? - Is available in Viewer.
- Export To PDF No Yes ? - is available in Viewer.
- Drill To Link No Yes ? - is available in Viewer. In Desktop you have the ability to do hyperdrills, so I would say you can do drills in Desktop also.
- Cascading Parameters ? Yes ? - available in all three components.
- OLAP Support No Yes ? - available in Viewer also.
- Command Line Interface Yes No No - there is a EUL Command Line utility available, so this functionality is pretty much platform independent. The component inclusion is not relevant here.
- Graph Types No Yes Display - you can change the graph type, sub-type, hide the graph, view the graph, and change other properties like size, 3D effect...
- High fidelity printing via PDF No No Yes - of course you have hi-fidelity printing in Plus. Also, you have export to PDF, which is the same as PDF printing...
- Stoplight Formatting Display Yes Display - escapes my mind for Viewer. Shall check on this.
- Interactive Pivoting No Yes No - yes!!! This is present in Plus as well as Viewer.
- Choose which worksheet to open before opening workbook No(5) No(5) Yes - you can do this in Plus. You can expand the workbook to see the worksheets there, and then select a specific worksheet to open. The default behavior if you select the workbook and click 'Open' is to run the last saved worksheet.
- Ability to schedule and export in one step - only in Desktop using command line interface and a third-party scheduler Yes(9) No No - shall be available very soon in Discoverer. Watch this space!
- Export Crosstab to Excel pivot table - this is available in Plus and Viewer.