A report that has run every month for ten years is not a report. It is ten years of decisions. Every filter is there because someone once produced the wrong number without it. Every join was argued over. Every prompt exists because a manager asked for one. When a team finally moves off Business Objects, all of that is sitting inside a handful of files, and the usual plan is to rebuild it from memory.
Rebuilding from memory is how you lose the decisions and keep only the ones you happen to remember.
The logic is in the file, just not readable
A BusinessObjects file holds the logic behind the report, but where it keeps it depends on the file. Older Desktop Intelligence reports embed the SQL directly. Universe-based Web Intelligence documents do not: they store the query objects you selected, and the server turns those into SQL from the universe at run time. Either way the logic is in there. It is just not in a form you can read. Open one in a text editor and you get noise, not answers.
Extract, do not retype
The members BO extractor reads the file in your browser and pulls that logic back out: the SQL where the report embeds it, and the query objects and structure where the SQL is generated server side. The scrape happens entirely client side, so the file itself never leaves your machine. If you want, an optional cleanup pass tidies the result into something ready to paste into Power BI or a database, but that step is yours to choose.
Moving off a reporting platform is hard enough without throwing away the thinking that went into it. The reports earned their filters and their joins the hard way. Take them with you, read them in daylight, and decide what to keep on purpose rather than by accident.
