#2. Web Analysis, SQR Production Reporting, and maybe Interactive Reporting are dead

While it's great to hear that Financial Reporting, Smart View, and Workspace are continuing, judging by comments made publicly by Oracle people who would know (and previously documented on this blog), there are some products that are going away.  Okay, let me clarify that one.  Technically, Oracle will support every product they produce forever and ever and ever.  It's part of their Lifetime Support Policy: if you keep paying your maintenance fees, Oracle will keep cashing your checks to their support group.

But there's a big difference between "Sustaining Support" of a product and a product being the strategic direction.  If a product is the strategic direction for a given area, then Oracle will be enhancing, expanding, and adding functionality for that product as they devote substantial R&D to that product.  If a product is not on the strategic path, then feel free to continue to use it, but realize that it will only be supported with limited enhancements.

And so we bid a fond farewell to Web Analysis and SQR Production Reporting.  In SQR's case, the strategic direction for relational reporting is OBIEE Publisher, and for Web Analysis, the strategic direction is OBIEE ANswers+.  Make sure you send a nice condolence card and some flowers to the Hyperion family as they mourn the losses of W.A. and SQR.

So what about Interactive Reporting?  Depends on who you ask and who's publicly talking.  I've heard that it's being "replaced" (remember that nothing ever goes away at Oracle) by a combination of Answers and Dashboards.  I've also heard that there are clients out there (some as large as Fortune 5 and no, not 500, but five) pushing for Oracle to continue enhancing and improving the product.  There seem to be a lot more people saying that it's dead versus that it will continue to fight on.  If I had to guess, I'd say that Interactive Reporting is going away, so we'll send a nice "Get Well Soon" card but we'll begin writing the obituary just in case.