Are you Still Looking for an Oracle Discoverer Replacement?

When Oracle first released Discoverer, it was groundbreaking. It was one of the first self-service tools available that provided support for ad hoc query, reporting, data analytics and web publishing for the Oracle database environment associated with Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS). The tool was a huge step forward from reporting solutions that predated it, and companies using Oracle EBS flocked to Discoverer – and many built libraries of reports within the solution. That’s why, even now – years after Oracle officially deprecated Discoverer in 2017 – many organizations and enterprises are still using the product. While moving away from your already built and trusted content can be scary, avoiding Oracle Discoverer replacement altogether, can be downright unproductive. Continuing to use Discoverer is, of course, one option, but any upgrades IT plan to databases, Oracle solutions or, even something as simple as a database driver, could disable Discoverer. You need a better plan because it is only a matter of time before your IT team will make a change to your company’s IT architecture that WILL break Discoverer.

So, what are your other options for Oracle Discoverer Replacement?

Option 1 – Do Nothing

Again, this is not really an option any longer. Oracle does offer sustaining support. But that only means that you get access to the last version (from June 2017) of Discoverer, any preexisting patches, and online support tools to look up past cases. It obviously does not include any new updates, any new fixes, security alerts, data fixes, any critical patch updates, etc. You only get access to what is already out there.

Option 2 – Upgrade to Oracle OBIEE or OAC

When Oracle originally announced End of Life for Discoverer, their recommendation was to switch to Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE) and adopt their pre-built content for OBIEE. More recently, Oracle is emphasizing Oracle Analytics Cloud (OAC) as another potential replacement for Discoverer. This will continue to be a popular route for many organizations who prefer to remain on an Oracle platform, but the upgrade path is not simple. The only thing that they provide is a tool that converts your end user layer but doesn’t convert any existing reports so there are substantial costs associated with converting your workbooks, reports, and user layer. There will also be costs for implementation, licensing, and training. Your existing users will need to be trained in OBIEE and OAC, and because they’re very feature rich it can be overwhelming for some users.

Option 3 – “Lift-and Shift” with ISV Tools

There are many tools available on the market that can be utilized to take your pre-existing reports, the SQL and data structures that enable those reports, and essentially copies and pastes that logic into the vendor tool. This can be an attractive option due to the speed of some of the conversion utilities available on the market, however, most only address that initial conversion. Certainly, many of these solutions offer a more elegant UI than Discoverer – and following this method ensures that all the reports previously accessible will now be accessible in the new tool. This option is simply a short-term solution to a larger problem that needs to be addressed. Should you wish to change any of the reports, add a column, for instance, or even create a new report, your business team will still need to rely on an IT resource skilled in SQL to modify the underlying data structure for the report. Worse still is, these tools will need to be upgraded whenever Oracle makes a change to EBS, so you are relying on that independent software vendor to keep up with Oracle changes and respond quickly to ensure your reports are available.

Option 4 – Embrace the Future of Reporting

Magnitude Angles for Oracle, formerly Noetix, offers a solution that goes above and beyond a simple “lift-and-shift” strategy. The context-rich business area data model that lies at the heart of the Magnitude Angles platform ensures that your exact EBS data model, including custom tables, calculations, and key flexfields, can be accessible either directly within the Angles UI or within ANY BI tool of choice, including OBIEE, PowerBI, Qlik, or Tableau, etc.

The platform’s Hub not only includes the ability to search for reports created in Discoverer, but also offers a library of hundreds of pre-built cross-functional reports and dashboards built from decades of working with some of the world’s largest brands.

There is no “push-button” solution for Oracle Discoverer replacement. However, the Angles platform and proven methodology for Discoverer migration that includes: “Determining Target Reports-> Map and Gap -> Extend Angles’ Views -> Recreating Reports in BI Tool of Choice -> User Training & Acceptance” will enable your organization to accomplish far more than simply migrating Discoverer. You can begin a cloud journey, with Angles Cloud and support for leading cloud vendors and technologies, including Snowflake, Azure SQL or Oracle; combine multiple Oracle on premise and cloud ERPs into a consolidated data store for reporting and analytics; and, of course, provide your users simple self-service access to pre-built reports available in their BI tool of choice.

Learn more about how Magnitude can help with Oracle Discoverer replacement by watching this Noetix demo from 2019. Since then, Magnitude has introduced Hub, a unified interface that enables administrators and users to find, modify and create new reports, which makes this process easier and faster.