Questions on R Integration with Business Intelligence

I just received yet another call from a reporter asking me to comment on yet another BI vendor announcing R integration. All leading BI vendors are embedding/integrating with R these days, so I was not sure what was really new in the announcement. I guess the real question is the level of integration. For example:

• Since R is a scripting language, does a BI vendor provide point-and-click GUI to generate R code?
• Can R routines leverage and take advantage of all of the BI metadata (data structures, definitions, etc.) without having to redefine it again just for R?
• How easily can the output from R calculations (scores, rankings) be embedded in the BI reports and dashboards? Do the new scores just become automagically available for BI reports, or does somebody need to add them to BI data stores and metadata?
• Can the BI vendor import/export R models based on PMML?
• Is it a general R integration, or are there prebuilt vertical (industry specific) or domain (finance, HR, supply chain, risk, etc) metrics as part of a solution?
• What server are R models executed in? Reporting server? Database server? Their own server?
• Then there's the whole business of model design, management, and execution, which is usually the realm of advanced analytics platforms. How much of these capabilities does the BI vendor provide?

Did I get that right? Any other features/capabilities that really distinguish one BI/R integration from another? Really interested in hearing your comments.

This blog originally appeared at Forrester Research.