Presenter Prasad Renati – Senior Principal

EiS Technologies Inc.

"Must Think" Discoverer Migration Challenges for APEX, OBIEE, SplashBI and Other tools

Agenda• Overview

• Oracle Discoverer • Brief History

• De-Support Announced

• Customer Concerns

• What are Your Options and Challenges?• Discoverer to OBIEE

• Discoverer to APEX

• Discoverer to SplashBI

• Q&A

Oracle announced de-support of Discoverer

Few Months To Go

The Birth and Deaths of Discoverer• 1997 Discoverer V2.0 released

• 1998 June V3.0 released – not very good!

• 1998 July V3.1 released – ah! That’s better!

• 2002 December Disco 2000 de-supported

• 2003 September 3.x de-supported

• 2007 June 4.x stand alone de-supported

• 2008 July 9i de-supported

• 2009 October 4.x EBS de-supported

• 2009 December 10g R1 de-supported

• 2011 December 10g R2 de-supported

• 2014 June 11g Premier Support Ends

• 2017 June 11g Extended Support Ends

Sources:Oracle SoDsMike DurranMichael Armstrong-SmithMark Rittman

Investment in Discoverer

Multiple Workbooks ranging from 100 – 70000

Multiple Business Areas

Integrity of the converted reports and the user experience

Is the solution robust?

Data Access & Security

High Costs, Time & Resources

Customer Concerns

What Are Your Options?1. Do Nothing… Continue to use your Discoverer tool

i. Least amount of effort and costii. Only Sustaining Support Available from Oracle after June 2017iii. No new licensing $$$ and No changes for users iv. No new features or enhancements will be made to Discoverer beyond 11.1.1.7.0

2. Find a replacement tool and rebuild the Discoverer reportsi. Oracle recommends migrating to Oracle Business Intelligenceii. Other Options

i. Transactional reporting tools: Third party toolsii. BI tools: BI Publisher/Tableau/Cognos/Business Objects, etciii. APEX

iii. Significant cost and time to rebuild reports

Discoverer Migration Options/Challenges

1. Discoverer to OBIEE

2. Discoverer to APEX

3. Discoverer to SplashBI

Discoverer to OBIEE Migration1. Discoverer Metadata Conversion Assistant

i. Command Line Utility to convert EUL to Repository (RPD)ii. Item Classes Not Convertediii. Folder Conditions not Convertediv. Limited

2. Workbooks Not Converted1. Columns2. Conditions3. Sort4. Calculations5. Page Items/Totals6. Format (Date, Number, Font and more)

3. Major Challenges1. Oracle Security Integration2. Calculation Expressions3. Sub Queries4. Development time constraints

Discoverer to OBIEE MigrationOracle EBS Standard Security Integration with OBIEE

Security Execution• User logs into EBS.

• EBS Authenticates

• Sets cookie

• User accesses OBIEE with EBS user login• Selects OBIEE responsibility in EBS

• EBS launches OBIEE• Fetch cookie, use to authenticate and authorization

• Read Oracle EBS for user, responsibilities, etc.

Solution Steps• Define EBS setups for BI access:

• Responsibility, Profile, Function, Menu

• Create roles to match Oracle EBS Responsibilities.• Set security privileges on Presentation catalog objects and subject area• Setup session variables, Initialization blocks, Connect scripts

Discoverer to APEXWhat is APEX?

• Oracle Application Express is a free development environment that runs on an Oracle database

• APEX can be used for Reporting, Charting and Data Entry Forms

• Fully supported and comes with all Oracle Database editions

• Browser based for development, deployment and run time

Discoverer to APEX

Discoverer to APEX Migration Process1. Extract Discover Query

2. Create a DB View to Hold Query

3. Grant Select and Create Synonym for View

4. Create Views for LOV’s for Non-Interactive Reports (optional)

5. Create APEX Page to Query View

6. Add APEX Security to Page

7. Create EBS Form Function for APEX Page

8. Add EBS Form Function to EBS Menu

Discoverer to APEX

Challenges/Pros (Compare to Discoverer)1. APEX does not allow the user to write an ad-hoc query

2. APEX Tables must be joined together in advance in a view

3. Create DB View for every report to Hold Query in APEX

4. After conversion to APEX, queries become reports and end users lose the ability to use Ad Hoc query tools

5. APEX is a declarative development platform not easily intuitive for a non-technical user.

6. Functional users will need to be moderately versed in SQL and will need to invest time learning in order to become proficient

ONE Framework

With In-Memory

Any Data Source

Any Device

Browser Tablet Mobile Excel

Dashboards Ad-hoc ReportingOn Demand Business Intelligence

& Reporting

Discoverer to SplashBI Migration

What is SplashBI?

Migration Utility – Fast and Accurate

Merge EULs

Keeps Report Infrastructure Intact

Run Reports from Excel, Mobile

Easy to Learn & more Features

EBS Responsibility Security & User Authentication

Built as Discoverer Replacement

Dashboards with Pre-Built Visualizations

Scheduling, Distribution & Bursting

Multiple Output Formats

In-Memory Analytics & Data Mashups

Ability to get EBS DFF/KFF

Connect to Other Data Sources

Drilldown Capability

What Should You Expect? High-Level

Discoverer to SplashBI Migration

What Should You Expect? Detail

EULBusiness Area

• Folder• Joins• Item Classes

Workbook/Sheet• Columns• Conditions• Sort• Calculations• Page Items/Totals• Security

Business AreaDomain

• Table• Joins• LOVs

Report Set/Reports• Columns• Filters/Parameters• Sort• Calculation Columns• Pivots• Share• Format

Oracle Discoverer New Tool

How Simple Should it be?

Demo

Q & A

Contact Information• Prasad Renati – prasad.renati@eistech.com

• Contact Us –info@eistech.com

• Website – www.eistech.com , www.splashbi.com

Thank You!