Moving from Oracle^® Reports to Jaspersoft^®

Option 1: Stay legacy

Migrating to a new reporting system is scary

Migrations can be highly complex and may put critical data and systems at risk. With so much at stake, it is natural to be wary of migrating at all. If Oracle Reports seems to be doing enough of what you need, it’s easy to understand why staying legacy could be an option. But let’s take a closer look at the pros and cons of sticking to the status quo.

Pros

• No new software to install. Just continue with Oracle Reports.
• No new learning required. Stay with a technology and process you know.
• Avoid migration risks. Avoid problems like broken report designs, queries, and security configurations.

Cons

• Technically, you are stuck. It’s difficult to integrate legacy systems with modern software which holds organizations back from innovating with new data sources, applications, and deployment techniques. In addition, the base system may run out of support, which may cause regulatory compliance concerns or force you to migrate the entire stack. Or, even worse, a piece of hardware stops working with no replacement parts available.
• You’re wasting money. Legacy systems can be expensive to maintain and support. It can also be difficult, and come at a premium, to find developers with specialized experience or the desire to work with products, which have reached their end of life (EOL) to make necessary updates that adapt to the businesses evolving needs.
• Puts the organization at risk. Oftentimes, legacy systems can be more vulnerable to security issues that would require new patches or updates. They may also be incompatible with modern security features and techniques, putting confidential data at risk and making it more difficult for organizations to detect and respond to cyber threats. 

Option 2: Migrate and modernize

While avoiding a painful migration has obvious appeal, in reality that option is only delaying the inevitable.

Migrating to a new system is not a matter of if, but when, it needs to be done. And as you will see, taking a proactive approach to modernize your reporting is the best way to reduce the risk of migration, position your organization to lead with innovation, and capitalize on new business opportunities.

Now, the pros and cons of migrating from Oracle Reports to a modern reporting platform . . .

Pros

• Increased business agility.  Modern flexible architecture allows you to leverage emerging data sources, deployment methods, and advanced APIs.
• Reduced costs.  You can increase productivity, reduce maintenance expenses, and save a significant amount with more efficient and optimized resource utilization.
• Rich new features.  Interactive charts and advanced support for seamlessly embedding ad hoc reports into applications can bring insight and agility to end users.
• Consolidation.  Modernization is always an ideal opportunity to clean up old applications and reports to centralize and consolidate them into an integrated framework.

Cons

• Difficult to scope.  In many cases, migrations can be complex and challenging, making it tricky to define the investment of time and cost.
• A lot of work.  You may need to rewrite legacy code for each report and reconfigure an environment that’s compatible with the new system.
• Potentially risky for data and systems.  Reports and data need to be properly secured and redefined for the new environment.

Why can migrating to a new reporting solution be hard?

Difficult to scope

Reporting environments can consist of hundreds or thousands of reports. Each report may have its own design, use different data sources and queries, and be delivered to different people. With so many factors to consider, the scoping process alone can be overwhelming.

Painful to execute

Once scoping is complete, the process of converting your existing reports and environment to the new solution begins. For the most part, this is a manual effort. A documented process is a necessity, but even then, migration can be extremely time intensive.

No margin for error

Reporting systems are often deeply embedded in day-today operations and critical processes. The migration must be done seamlessly. Mistakes can prevent key information from reaching an employee or customer.

What do you need to make it happen?

Proven processes

It’s critical that you have a blueprint that outlines and addresses how you will handle report designs, queries, scheduling services, and integration with employee directories and security systems.

Automation

Unless you have a burning desire to rewrite all of your reports and queries, you’re seeking some level of automation.

While it is unlikely that everything can be automated (complex reports and custom functions are common examples), you will thank your lucky stars for every report and chunk of code that does not have to be manually rewritten.

Expertise at a FIXED price

While not a requirement, having an expert on board to steer your migration process will help you finish sooner and ensure you are safely moving systems without downtime.

The best experts will follow a proven process and provide some level of automation. Just be sure they offer fixed pricing to avoid unexpected costs.

Modern reporting technology

Of course, you need a migration target. In addition to desired architecture, functionality, and pricing, seek information from those who have migrated to the reporting software you are considering.

Has a migration from Oracle Reports to your target technology been done successfully?

Search online and learn from others who have gone through this experience already.

Meet the Oracle Reports migration solution

PITSS is an award-winning specialist in digital transformation for legacy Oracle systems.

Using a combination of specialized software and technical expertise, the PITSS team migrates customers from Oracle Reports to the Jaspersoft commercial edition reporting platform. With many successfully completed projects, PITSS has the expertise and software specifically designed to migrate your legacy system to the Jaspersoft software’s open architecture and rich feature set.

Oracle Reports to JasperReports in 4 steps

Using a combination of proprietary automation software and best practices, PITSS technical migration specialists offer a full-service migration path for organizations seeking to move from Oracle Reports environments.

At the core of every migration is PITSS.CON, all-in-one legacy code and application analysis and transformation software.

This tool is used in all four steps to analyze, prepare, refactor, manage, and even document your entire migration.

The PITSS.CON process workflow diagram helps you understand where your project stands at any point in the migration.

Step 1: Preparation

The PITSS.CON tool is used to provide a comprehensive analysis of your existing reporting environment and to detail the work required for each of your reports.

The project dashboard helps define the scope and expected costs of your migration.

Scope of work

• Reports cleaned of dead code as well as unused and redundant objects
• Business logic analyzed and adapted to target environment
• Reports refactored for optimal migration that is often automated
• Documentation of changes made by PITSS.CON and what remains to be done

Step 1: Migration to the Sandbox Environment

This is where the magic happens.

Once reports have been analyzed and prepared, the actual migration can begin. PITSS.CON converts designated reports from the Oracle Reports file format to the JasperReports source file format. Successfully converted reports are deposited in a sandbox environment.

Scope of work

• PITSS.CON Suite customized for your project
• Data service layer extracted from existing architecture
• Individual or batch conversion of reports
• Feedback loops and quality checks
• Project documentation
• Legacy architecture (code allocation, program sizes, lines of code, complexity, analysis, and more)
• Status as described in the screen capture

This is your migration console. From here, you can select a report for migration and choose to migrate one or more reports at a time. With each migration attempt, a detailed log is generated providing metadata on whether or not a report was successfully migrated. If migration failed, a clear diagnosis is provided to help you understand exactly where the problem lies and how PITSS.CON will fix it.

Step 3: Fine-tuning

The output from Step 2 is assessed and reports are fine-tuned to look and behave as they did prior to migration.

Testing provides a clean, organized environment to support the inspection and correction of each report. The amount of fine-tuning required is dependent on the complexity of the reports. Data models and visual components tend to migrate at a higher success rate than custom functions and other objects that may not have a correspondent in JasperReports.

Scope of work

• Complete report migration to the sandbox environment
• Test all reports
• Fix bugs
• Project documentation

Step 4: Roll-out

Moving the sandbox environment to a live production server is the final step in the migration project.

Once this is complete, your migration from Oracle Reports to Jaspersoft is complete and you can now deploy new reports to your Jaspersoft production environment.

Scope of work

• Unit tests to ensure everything is working as expected
• Ensure your Jaspersoft environment is fully functional

The completed process

Use Case: Modern reporting for modern kitchens

Due to ending support and a lack of desired features, a global kitchen cabinet manufacturer engaged PITSS to migrate its large Oracle Reports environment to Jaspersoft.

How to get started?

Reach out to the Jaspersoft team and let us show you how you can future-proof and modernize your reporting by migrating from Oracle Reports to Jaspersoft.

About our partner

PITSS is the leader in digital transformation for legacy Oracle systems because of its tools, team, and expertise. The PITSS team has led thousands of projects for more than 1,000 customers in more than 40 countries. No one knows Oracle systems like PITSS. They can take you from planning, to pilot, to the cloud, and beyond.

Learn more