Discoverer’s Role in Business Intelligence

As stated earlier, Oracle has firmly positioned Discoverer right at the heart of its business intelligence strategy. But Discoverer is more than just a component of a suite of tools (albeit an extremely powerful suite). It has the ability to stand on its own two feet, to make a place for itself within your company, and to be your analysis tool of choice. This book, therefore, will now concentrate on Discoverer itself. So just where does this tool come from, and how can it fit in with your company’s business intelligence strategy?

Oracle Introduces Discoverer

With the introduction of the Windows version of Discoverer (now called Oracle Business Intelligence Discoverer Desktop) in the late 1990s, Oracle gave anyone working in business intelligence an award-winning, easy-to-use ad hoc query and analysis tool. It was developed as a means to view data stored in Oracle databases, and to analyze and create reports based upon that data. Discoverer is a tool that places power in the hands of the user—power that until Discoverer came along was the domain of developers. It empowered users to gain immediate access to information stored in OLTP systems, data warehouses, and even the Oracle E-Business Suite, otherwise referred to as Oracle Applications, or just Apps.