Written by Sharan Bidnoorkar
Oracle Application Database Administrator at Blue Crystal Solutions
OBIEE 11g & Oracle Database 11g Premier Support and Error Correction Support ends
When Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE) 11g and Oracle Database 11g Premier Support and Error Correction Support ended and underlying hardware Oracle Exalytics X5-4 was nearing end-of-support, users electing to continue with these versions were faced with purchasing Extended Support. This option would only provide an extra three years of support for an additional yearly increasing fee to stay competitive and retain the freedom to upgrade at their own pace.
By migrating to Oracle Analytics Server on X8 Servers, this upgrade will give them access to the premium support, latest hardware and applications that provide better performance, additional features and functionality without the added cost and risk of no support for obsolete and out-of-warranty hardware.
Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE) is a business intelligence tool created by Oracle to gather, store, and analyse data for enterprise reports, dashboards, scorecards, and ad hoc analysis.
Oracle Analytics Server (OAS) is an on-premise self-service visualization and augmented artificial intelligence (AI) analytics platform. It offers AI capabilities that provide key insights from your data, with data enrichment features that automatically recommend new elements for analysis, machine learning (ML) capabilities for both traditional and citizen data scientists, and advanced data visualizations for your dashboards with pixel-perfect reporting. OAS is built on a robust and modern foundation that supports the most data heavy workloads and most complex deployments while providing timely insights to users across an enterprise at a minimal total cost of ownership (TCO). OAS shares more similarities with Oracle Analytics Cloud (OAC) than OBIEE – and that’s intentional, as OAS was developed to help on-premises customers transition to the cloud.
Oracle Server X8-8, Oracle’s latest server is designed, optimized, and pretested for specific Oracle software workloads. These servers are the most reliable, highest performing x86 servers on the market, driving simplification through innovation. With its unmatched serviceability and reliability features, along with state-of-the-art security in depth, Oracle Server X8-8 is an enterprise-class system capable of even the most extreme workloads.
OBIEE 11g [11.1.1.9] is a terminal release and error correction is stopped also for the Oracle Database 11g (11.2.0.3) used for OBIEE and underlying hardware used for OBIEE 11g Exalytics X5-4 nearing the end-of-support.
Prerequisites and Migration Process
Ensure that you configure Oracle Fusion Middleware infrastructure and Oracle Analytics Server distributions on the target system as per Oracle recommendations in preparation for the migration.
OAS is a relaunch and rebrand of Oracle Business Intelligence and existing licensed OBIEE users can easily make the switch to OAS. This makes the migration process simple and ensures a smooth transition between the two products. Migration is a two-step process:
- Create an export bundle from a read-only Oracle Business Intelligence release (11.1.1.9.0).
- Import the export bundle into the Oracle Analytics Server system.
Benefits of Oracle Analytics Server for Existing OBIEE Customers
OAS enables existing OBIEE customers to modernize their analytics while having the flexibility to move to the cloud at their own pace. OAS empowers customers to:
- Leverage AI-powered augmented analytics for machine learning assisted data enrichment and analysis
- Experience self-service data visualization and a modern analytics user experience
- Drive innovation; explore and discover new insights by combining structured and unstructured data
- Get faster time to insights with Explain, an AI engine that uses machine learning to show correlations, distributions, and segmentation in data
OAS System Architecture
Reference: Oracle
How we implemented it: Our Client Story
We have successfully helped one of our customers move from Oracle Business Intelligence to OAS on Oracle’s latest hardware Oracle Server X8-8 machine.
Recently a Government Health client needed to upgrade to the latest Oracle hardware because of increased ongoing support cost to maintain hardware after end of support.
OAS enabled the agency, an existing OBIEE customer, to modernize their analytics whilst moving from On-Premises Oracle Exalytics to On-Premises X8 Oracle Server.
The following high level migration steps were undertaken to carry out the work:
- Installed and Configured Oracle Database 19c
- Installed and configured Oracle Fusion Middleware infrastructure 12c
- Installed and configured Oracle Analytics Server 5.x
- Generated the Export Bundle file from OBIEE 11g
- Imported Export Bundle file into Oracle Analytics Server
- Post review and configuration completed
The client now has the ability to enjoy the benefits OAS enables existing OBIEE customers to modernize their analytics while having the flexibility to move to the cloud at their own pace.
Looking to adopt a similar practice? For more information about how we can assist your organisation or if you’re in IT, to support your own learning in this space, please contact us.
