Migrating from Oracle Discoverer: Everything you need to know

Oracle Discoverer used to be a trusted ad-hoc operational reporting tool, that was primarily used by Oracle ERP customers. However, it reached its end of life (i.e. Oracle stopped offering support for Discoverer) a few years back.

In spite of this lack of support and upgrades, organizations continued to use Oracle Discoverer for basic analysis. They did this because they didn’t want to lose some of their legacy data and reports, in case they needed to use it for data analysis in the future.

But now, business leaders and IT decision-makers have realized that if their companies are still using Oracle Discoverer, it is time to migrate as soon as possible.

Additionally, when it comes to operational reporting, the need of the hour is adopting self-service, next-generation tools where the reliance on IT teams is reduced. They are looking for a modern reporting and analytics solution that can offer the following features and capabilities:

• Intuitive dashboards
• Fast, flexible, and easy self-service reporting and analytics
• Operational reporting capabilities to analyze vast amounts of data that is residing in your ERP/Non-ERP Applications
• Ease of data analysis, possibly in a tabular format with Excel plugins
• Automatically publish periodic reports
• Generate pixel-perfect business documents and financial reports to be shared with others
• Integrate data from multiple sources or data stores

In this post, we cover a wide range of topics related to replacing Oracle Discoverer and the process you need to adopt to find the right tool to replace it.

About Oracle Discoverer: Why did EBS users choose this tool?

Oracle’s Discoverer application was designed as a smart ad hoc query and analysis reporting tool for businesses. In January of 2009, Oracle released a public statement encouraging its users to migrate from Discoverer. Fast forward a decade and organizations are still using this solution, even after Oracle announced Discoverer’s end of life in June 2017. What was special about Discoverer? Why did companies use this tool for transactional and operational reporting?

There were three key reasons:

Integration with other Oracle tools was seamless: Discoverer seamlessly integrated with other Oracle business intelligence and reporting tools, such as Oracle Reports and Oracle BI Publisher. This integration allowed companies to leverage their existing Oracle investments and create a unified reporting and analytics ecosystem.

Integration with Oracle Database was a critical factor: Oracle Discoverer was developed by Oracle Corporation and as a result, Discoverer seamlessly integrated with Oracle Databases, making it an attractive choice for companies already using any Oracle tool.

Ad-hoc query capabilities used to be top-notch: Discoverer offered powerful ad hoc query capabilities, allowing users to create custom reports and analyze data according to their specific requirements. This flexibility made it popular among business users who needed to access and manipulate data in real-time without relying too much on IT or technical support.

It’s 2023! You need to Replace Discoverer ASAP!

If your organization has not done so already, it’s time to select a Discoverer replacement solution and begin migrating your reports. In fact, it’s already too late.

The image above – which is a screenshot from a Discoverer training session a few years back – depicts how outdated the Discoverer solution has become. Even the example shown is that of a video rental company!

Why Haven’t Organizations Migrated from Discoverer?

Changing a reporting solution isn’t an easy decision. It’s not an easy project either, especially if you have to manually recreate reports. Many large organizations have created hundreds or thousands of reports using Discoverer, so a project to migrate from them is a significant undertaking; one that impacts many critical departments in an organization.

Businesses don’t always see a benefit from moving off a legacy solution. Replacing existing reports with similar versions generated by another system is time-consuming and not particularly profitable.

What are some replacement options provided by Oracle?

Oracle’s own replacement reporting options, OBIEE and OTBI, are expensive. And complex.

Moving users to these solutions will take a significant amount of training and hand-holding. For example, OBIEE offers a Discoverer migration utility, but it does not migrate the end user layer (EUL) that contains the database metadata. A migration project will have to dedicate time to rebuilding the semantic layer for all reports.

Why Do You Need to Migrate from Discoverer?

Nonetheless, if your business is still using Discoverer for ad hoc and operational reporting in Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) and/or custom database applications, you need to migrate.

Staying on an unsupported legacy product is a risk for a number of reasons:

• No support if an instance breaks: Proper support is no longer available for Discoverer. If your instance breaks, you have no technical support to fix it.
• Cannot work with multiple data sources: With Discoverer, it is not possible to bring in data from multiple sources. This is critical as organizations increasingly need to report against varied (including cloud) data sources.
• Periodic scheduling of reports is difficult: Because Discoverer does not integrate with Oracle Concurrent Manager, you cannot schedule reports to run on a regular basis. There is an opportunity cost associated with remaining on a legacy tool.
• Incompatibility with modern applications and databases: Discoverer is based on an older, client-server architecture – not browser-based like modern solutions. This can force you to continue to support an older technology stack and prevent you from upgrading servers or moving to the cloud.
• Downtime and/or risk of data breaches: Unsupported software is also a likely target for security exploits from hackers. These can result in significant costs to organizations, either from system downtime, external consultant costs, or penalties.
• Not future-ready: Organizations that rely on Discoverer are missing out on the future of reporting, as it moves from transactional, operational reporting to robust analytics encompassing new data sources, predictive models, and even artificial intelligence.

Orbit: A Preferred Discoverer Replacement Tool

With easy data access, better organizational insights, and one of the fastest times to value in the industry, Orbit is the clear replacement to Oracle’s Discoverer.

Depending on the number of your Discoverer reports in Oracle EBS and custom applications, manual migration by a dedicated team of experts can take anywhere from a few months to a few years. But with a Discoverer replacement like Orbit Analytics paired with adherence to best practices, migration can happen quickly, efficiently and affordably.

Orbit supports multiple system platforms, including Oracle E-Business Suite, Oracle Fusion, PeopleSoft, Taleo and more. It’s a powerful reporting application for creating simple to complex reports for your organization, delivered with over a thousand pre-built reports encompassing Oracle Financials, Supply Chain, and HRMS.

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

Orbit Reporting and Discoverer Migration Overview

Watch this video to find out more:

OTBI and SAP Crystal Reports: Some Other Discoverer Replacement Options

Oracle Transactional Business Intelligence (OTBI) is an Oracle BI product for OLTP reporting against Fusion (Oracle Cloud) apps only. While a good option for cloud-only environments, it may be less optimal for organizations that need to report on a variety of cloud and on-premises data sources.

OTBI is not an ad hoc or self-service reporting solution

Its report creation interface is somewhat rigid and outdated, using a wizard instead of a more modern drag-and-drop interface. Because OTBI does not come with an inventory of prebuilt reports, a migration project will need to budget time to recreate all Discoverer reports and dashboards. OTBI also requires another Oracle product, BI Publisher, for report bursting and distribution and pixel-perfect reporting.

SAP Crystal Reports

A Legacy Reporting Solution Crystal is another popular reporting solution with a long lifespan. Organizations that have an existing Crystal implementation may think it’s a good idea to consolidate reporting in the tool.

However, Crystal has a number of critical drawbacks including

• Lack of next-generation security (for instance, cannot leverage existing SSO)
• The dated user interface, which makes it difficult to drill down
• Does not have the latest data visualization requirements
• Lack of self-service capabilities
• Crystal is also reaching its end of life. SAP has already announced the end of mainstream and maintenance support for this product.

Why Orbit to Replace Discoverer?

Orbit is one of several modern alternatives to Discoverer. The many benefits of modern reporting and analytics solutions in general (and Orbit in particular) include

• Cost savings compared to Oracle’s pricing.
• Data source agnostic – Orbit can report against any data source with a JDBC driver. That includes MySQL, SQL Server, DB2 and more.
• A more modern, web-based product is updated regularly to add new features and functions.

It is worthwhile, as part of a Discoverer migration project, to talk to one or more third-party analytics vendors before committing to an enterprise BI product that may be more complex or expensive than you need.

Discoverer Migration: Made Easy with Orbit’s Automated Solution

With our migration utility, automatic conversion of Oracle Discoverer Reports is possible.

You shouldn’t need to put your operations on hold when you replace your Oracle Discoverer reporting tool. Orbit comes with an Oracle Discoverer migration assistant that converts all the Discoverer reports, ensuring quick time to value.

5 Key Best Practices for Migrating from Discoverer

• Audit reports and reduce your report inventory as much as possible prior to migration. Look at report run statistics to determine which reports are critical and which are not. Typically, reports that have not been run within the past year will not be good candidates for re-creation.
• Set benchmarks for the new reporting application performance, for example, to measure query speeds against Discoverer. 
• Estimate at least one team member should be dedicated to the migration project. A typical project can take about ten weeks. 
• Set up a timeframe during which reports are generated from both systems and ensure they are checked regularly for discrepancies. 
• Finally, don’t neglect training end users on your new reporting solution. Offer group classes, designate departmental SMEs, set up a user-accessible training environment, and create short instructional videos.

Listen to this Webinar titled “Dealing with a Desupported EBS Reporting Tool like Oracle Discoverer?” click here.