Organizations migrating their Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) to OCI for better availability and reliability still have the need to retain historical data that may not be migrated for regulatory and business requirements. However, access these systems and the expertise to work with them fades overtime. Inoapps Archiving Solution—offered by Oracle partner Inoapps—enhanced with Oracle Select AI, enables organizations to manage secure, natural‑language access to archived EBS data—no specialized EBS skills required. It also provides faster responses to ad hoc inquiries (e.g., FOI, audits, legal) while preserving data governance and controlling costs to save businesses time and money.

This blog is written in collaboration with:
Debra Lilley, Thought Leader & Advocate at Inoapps
Drew Edgar, VP Application Technology & Products at Inoapps

The challenge we observed

The Inoapps team found that ad hoc queries against historical EBS data by customers are infrequent but urgent—often triggered by Freedom of Information requests, audits, or court orders – with tight deadlines. This challenge was previously addressed by creating a library of predefined reports over curated views. However, users still had to understand which report to run—or worse, write custom SQL—to get the right set of data they are looking for, resulting in a long turnaround time and increased reliance on scarce EBS expertise.

Inoapps approach with Select AI

Select AI is a capability of Oracle Autonomous AI Database that lets users query data using natural language, as well as support retrieval augmented generation (RAG), synthetic data generation, and AI agents. When Oracle announced Select AI for Autonomous AI Database, the Inoapps team saw a perfect fit. Because their highly-recognized Archiving Solution already exposes clean, user‑friendly views, it had the right metadata foundation for getting it integrated with Select AI to achieve more accurate SQL generation. Within six months of Select AI’s availability, the Inoapps technical team enabled natural‑language querying with minimal changes to the solution’s view definitions. Figure 1 below shows how the Inoapps used Select AI’s Natural Language to SQL (NL2SQL) capability in its solution. Select AI uses the database metadata from Inoapps’ proprietary archiving views.

Figure 1: Select AI automated NL2SQL pipeline

The great news is that Select AI honors Autonomous AI Database’s security model. This means role-based access controls, redaction, and row‑level security continue to apply—so we could add natural‑language access without compromising governance.

What this unlocks for users

With this integration, users can ask questions in plain English: “What was our total quarterly spend with Acme last year?” or “Show order item details for invoice ABC1234.” They can retrieve invoices, POs, finance, and HR records without writing SQL. Using conversation memory, they can iteratively refine questions (“only Q3,” “group by cost center,” etc.) and apply user feedback to improve future results.

How Inoapps Archiving Solution helps Oracle customers

After customers move to SaaS, they still need compliant, cost‑effective access to historical EBS data without maintaining full EBS environments. Keeping a read‑only EBS instance can introduce licensing and support overhead. Keeping only the database still requires specialized EBS skills and knowledge, which often diminishes overtime.

To address these challenges, Inoapps built the Inoapps Archiving Solution, developed in Oracle APEX. The solution:

  • Takes a copy of the EBS database,
  • Adds business‑friendly views and a simplified, role‑based security model,
  • Supports redaction where required,
  • Provides a report library and the option to create custom reports, and
  • Answers natural language questions about the EBS data

This resulted in compelling customer outcomes:

  • Faster responses to ad hoc, time‑sensitive requests (e.g., audits, FOI, legal)
  • Reduced reliance on scarce EBS reporting skills
  • Higher confidence that queries respect governance and security settings

For example, in one case, a customer requested a new query around invoice details which would have taken a skilled developer a couple of hours. AI gave the answer in seconds.

With Select AI, Inoapps Archiving Solution lowers barriers to insight. Non‑technical users can now self‑serve, while power users and IT retain control via governed views and auditability. Further, it takes advantage of database scalability, conversation memory, automated metadata selection, and user feedback loops to keep improving accuracy and speed to answer.

The solution is available on Oracle Marketplace and now extends beyond EBS to JD Edwards and PeopleSoft.

What’s next?

Oracle and Inoapps are partnering to extend this production use case further, leveraging recent Select AI enhancements to improve accuracy, reduce time to value, and broaden functional coverage across finance, procurement, HR, and supply chain domains in archived datasets.

Learn more about the Inoapps Archiving Solution on Oracle Marketplace. Speak with Inoapps about enabling Select AI for your archived EBS data and expanding to additional legacy estates.

For more information, see:

Inoapps

Wherever you are on your Oracle journey, Inoapps is your trusted global Oracle-only partner for transformation. We deliver complete applications and technology solutions, plus our own products and accelerators that extend Oracle SaaS. From strategy and implementation to managed services, we help you to future-proof your Oracle investment and unlock its full potential. Inoapps is Oracle’s Global Managed Service Provider of the Year.