In the era of client-server computing, Oracle had the ad hoc reporting tool that was known as Oracle Discoverer. It was a reporting tool that could be used by users who were not very technical to generate reports by visually selecting columns from tables into the tool, which rendered the report. The report could incorporate graphics. As the web-enabled technologies started becoming more popular, the tool evolved into Oracle BI Discoverer.
BI is an acronym for Business Intelligence. Business Intelligence tools and technologies were designed to extract “intelligence” from an organization’s transaction data. Given that the transaction data may have been captured, processed and maintained by different applications using different databases, a data warehouse is required to centralize the transaction data before mining the intelligence from it.
A special technology is used to extract data from the online transaction processing (OLTP) databases, transform the data coming from the different databases into a uniform format and then load it into the database. This technology follows the steps of:
- Extraction
- Transformation
- Loading
This process is therefore often referred to as the ETL processes. Oracle’s technology follows the flow of: Extraction–>Loading–>Transformation (ELT). The transformation part takes place in the database using the database engine.
“Upgrading your Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition platform to Oracle Analytics Server does not imply losing any of your developed (catalog) objects, security model or your corporate Identity Management (IDM) strategy”
BI tools are then used to mine “intelligence” from the harmonized data in the data warehouse, which is an Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) database. This applies to structured data, which is stored in normalized tables in keeping with Dr E.F. Codd’s rules for relational Relational Database Management Systems (RDBMS’s). With the recognition of the importance of big data , the data warehouse underwent a redefinition and remodeling. The data warehouse has therefore now been replaced with the data lake, which combines both structured and unstructured (big) data [ big data is not available in normalized format, and usually originates from the social media, system logs, email content et al].
On 31st January 2020, Oracle announced the release of the Oracle Analytics Server (OAS), which is the replacement for Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE) 12c. Organizations that are using OBIEE 12c now need to migrate their OBIEE to OAS in order to continue enjoying the Oracle Premier support. OAS is the on-premises version of the Oracle Analytics Cloud (OAC).
The last release of OBIEE was 12c release 12.2.1.4, which was released in April 2018. The Premier Support (support with error correction or bug fixes) is scheduled to end in December 2023. It is vital for customers still using OBIEE 12c release 12.2.1.3 [ released in August 2017 ] to note that its Premier Support (i.e. support with error correction or bug fixes) ended in December 2021. Premier Support for the earlier release, OBIEE 12c release 12.2.1.2 ended, in August 2018.
Extended Support for OBIEE 12c release 12.2.1.4 ends in August 2025, while the Extended Support for OBIEE 11g release 11.1.1.x ended in December 2021. The last major OBIEE 11g release was 11.1.1.9.
In order to continue enjoying the benefits of full Premier Support (with error corrections or bug fixes), OBIEE users must implement, or upgrade to, a version that is currently under Premier Support.
If you are planning to upgrade your OBIEE platform to OAS and you want to be assured of a smooth migration of your OBIEE objects, security model as well as a retention of your user identity management strategy, do not hesitate to get in touch with us. We understand the database (OLTP and OLAP databases), ETL/ELT tools and analytical reports development. We undertake analytical reports development with the mind of data scientists. As a result, we often provide our customers with more useful reports than what they had envisioned prior to engaging us.
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