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Mifos BI optionally provides a data warehouse (although there are about 12 Pentaho reports that are dependent on it). This requires another "installation step" on top of the Pentaho Server install step.
Available Generally
As Mifos uses the MySQL is the database Mifos uses, any standalone database. Any reporting tool or product can be used to access and report on Mifos data. For example, MS-Access, Birt, Jasper plus probablyhundreds of others.
Summary of Feedback on Reporting
Most people would prefer most reports to be available though the Mifos application. The extra installation needs for Mifos BI (Pentaho Server) and the Mifos Data Warehouse are often seen as obstacles.
There are different 'sizes' of MFI. The large MFI's may invest more in 'mining' their data but smaller ones just need reports to work out-of-the-box.
MFI's just want access to their data quickly and flexibly.