Fusion Middleware 12.2.1.3

It has been a slow death, though Oracle Reports will still be supported by Oracle until 2020 (12c Release2). There was RPT, then ReportWriter and then Reports, probably the biggest nightmare was Reportwriter but that is history now. With the latest release of Fusion Middleware 12.2.1.3 we find that this is the terminal release of Oracle Reports. I suspect there will be no immediate panic, many Oracle customers are running on de-supported, though very stable, Oracle products, whether it is Forms, Application Server of Database. The only downside is if you get a serious problem and are told to upgrade – then comes the soul searching and questioning if the upgrade is forced upon you in an untimely fashion.

Options I am seeing customers choose – BI Publisher, from the Oracle Applications stable. Look into the licensing implications of a move. There is also Oracle BI in the cloud  or BICS, Yes, much more than Reporting but most reporting requirements I see require a BI element. Other customers are jumping to Jasper Reports, though was bought by Tibco, has a great community edition. Always interested to hear experiences of migrating to tools working against an Oracle Database.