ORACLE DISCOVERER DECOMMISSIONING IN PRACTICE
Eric McDonald. June 2019
Oracle Discoverer Decommissioning in Practice
— Let’s make this session as interactive as possible, so please ask questions during the
session
Some starter questions
— What stage are you at with Oracle decommissioning?
— It’s a problem, what do we do about it?
— We’re in the planning stage
— It’s in progress
— How many of you are looking at decommissioning in the next 12 months?
— What are your expectations of this session – what would you like to know?
— What’s your role – management / technical / other?
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Oracle Discoverer Decommissioning in Practice
Introduction
— Baillie Gifford
— My Role
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Baillie Gifford
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Baillie Gifford
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Baillie Gifford
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Oracle Discoverer Decommissioning in Practice
The Challenge
— Oracle Support for Discoverer expiring
— Upgrading to Windows 10
Our Starting Point
— Using Discoverer 6i client / server on Windows 7
— Existing base of around 100 users across 14 teams
— Approx. 400 workbooks
— Discoverer supporting key business processes
— Business Teams need to be able to do self-service reporting
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Oracle Discoverer Decommissioning in Practice
Our Environment
— Oracle 12c DB only - native Oracle logins (no EBS)
— Access managed by Oracle Roles
— EUL Business Areas – 10 out of 40 active
— EUL Fields – approx. 1,500 of 3,000 active
— Mainly using Oracle views and some tables as the interface
— Our data was mainly list-based
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Oracle Discoverer Decommissioning in Practice
Our Options
— Rebuild everything – estimated to take 24 months
— Try and get Discoverer working on Windows 10
— Upgrade to Oracle’s latest reporting option
Challenges
— Most reporting tools want to use some form of data cube
e.g. Tableau, Microsoft, Oracle
— We needed to maintain business as usual
— We needed to decommission in less than 12 months
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Oracle Discoverer Decommissioning in Practice
Splash BI
— Offered similar self-service functionality to Discoverer
— Familiar to Discoverer users
— …but, more user-friendly experience
— Excel add-in or browser-based
— Discoverer migration utility a key feature in reducing project time
— Migrates both workbooks and EUL
— Straightforward way of building list based reports, cross-tabs, and “just getting data into
Excel” !
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Demo
Oracle Discoverer Decommissioning in Practice
How we managed the project
— Migrated by Business Team
— Business Analysis
— Migration
— UAT
— Sign-Off
— Identified high-risk areas early
— Project duration 6 months
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Oracle Discoverer Decommissioning in Practice
What worked well?
— Similarity to Discoverer helped training
process
— 90+% of workbooks migrated easily
— Business Analysis identified people who no
longer needed the data or workbooks
— Very few post-migration support issues
— Splash BI Support Team issue resolution
What caused issues?
— Server setup required new Linux skills
— Missing joins as we only migrated some
fields
— Custom DB functions in Discoverer
— Age of existing Discoverer environment
meant some workbooks could not be
exported
— Business Team availability for UAT
— Removing our existing Discoverer
infrastructure
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Oracle Discoverer Decommissioning in Practice
Things to Remember
— Sit down with the business teams and work out what they need
— Have a clear plan agreed with the business teams
— Make sure communication is clear and timely
— Make sure the infrastructure is in place early
— Plan the new system architecture carefully
— Test and retest migrations and roll-out scenarios before business teams have access
— Make sure you have buy-in from business teams – do demos!
— Make sure training is in place before, during, and after migration
— Make sure that support handover is planned
— Talk to the business teams at every stage
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Questions?
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