FAQs for Discoverer Replacement

Common Questions that come up while Migrating from Oracle Discoverer

Oracle BI Discoverer, an integrated business intelligence component of Oracle Fusion Middleware, facilitated intuitive ad-hoc query, reporting, analysis, and Web-publishing functionality. It empowered business users to gain access to information relevant to their needs from data marts, data warehouses, multidimensional (OLAP) data sources, and online transaction processing systems.

However, Oracle sunsetted the tool a couple of years ago. We answer a few frequently asked questions about Discoverer migration for businesses who are still using Discoverer and do not know what is a viable alternative.

Why do you need to migrate from Discoverer?

Many businesses continue to use Discoverer for ad hoc and operational reporting in Oracle E-Business Suite (Oracle EBS) and/or custom database applications. However, since it is an unsupported legacy product, it is time to migrate due to the several risks in continuing to use it. These include:

• The absence of technical support in case of any problems with Discoverer
• With multiple data sources becoming common in organizations, Discoverer can prove to be a limiting factor as it does not report against other, non-EBS, data sources
• Since Discoverer does not integrate with Oracle Concurrent Manager, it cannot be scheduled to run reports on a regular basis
• With many new-gen ad hoc reporting analysis tools being available in the market, using an old tool like Discoverer can prove to be a hurdle in your realizing your business goals
• Unsupported software is vulnerable to security breaches

Why do organizations delay migrating from Discoverer?

While migrating from Discoverer is essential due to the risks, it is not an easy decision to make, nor an easy project to undertake. Businesses have to consider migrating hundreds or thousands of reports they have created over a period of time, and manually recreating them can be time-consuming and prone to errors.

Finding an alternative is also not easy. In the case of Oracle’s OBIEE and OTBI, apart from being expensive, migrating can also be a complex process. Also, though OBIEE offers a Discoverer migration utility, the end-user layer (EUL) that contains the database metadata cannot be migrated. Therefore, it will involve rebuilding the semantic layer for all the reports.

Are there viable alternatives to Discoverer?

Orbit Reporting and Analytics solution is an Oracle-native tool that offers automated Discoverer reports migration without putting your operations on hold during the process. Orbit comes with an Oracle Discoverer migration assistant that converts all the Discoverer reports, ensuring quick time to value.

Do the Discoverer reports need to be modified prior to migrating?

No, Orbit does not need the reports to be re-designed before migrating. Orbit’s free Oracle Discoverer migration wizard automatically converts your reports without any loss to data when you move to a new reporting system.

What are some of the other advantages of migrating to Orbit?

Orbit provides more than 1,000 pre-built Oracle Financials, Supply Chain, and HCM reports that let your content get up and running quickly, saving hundreds of hours of manual labor. While offering an array of business views, they can also be customized to meet your needs.

Self-service is another feature that makes Orbit a dream to use as it empowers your business users to generate their own reports without having to seek the help of IT. Your You business users can also schedule reports to run on a recurring or one-time basis, align with your month-end processes, internal planning needs, or when new data becomes available.

Data visualizations such as charts, graphs, and maps are also possible, facilitating easy interpretation of raw data from Oracle EBS or other sources. The drill-down feature to the lowest level of detail offers deeper insights.

The reports can be exported to Excel, PDF, or other formats, and collaboration across teams is possible.

Orbit is platform-agnostic, allowing you to use it on Oracle E-Business Suite, Oracle Fusion, PeopleSoft, Taleo, and more. Be it Oracle Financials, Supply Chain, or HRMS, you can use it to create simple to complex reports for your organization.

Orbit connects to any database with a JDBC driver, including Oracle, MySQL, IBM DB2, Microsoft SQL Server. With an HTML5 front end for a modern, web-based UI, it delivers real-time operational reporting, drill-down for details, dashboarding, and ad hoc inquiry capabilities in an integrated business intelligence package.

These features make Orbit a popular tool for Discoverer users.

For more information visit: https://www.orbitanalytics.com/migrating-from-oracle-discoverer/