Oracle 9i Developer Suite data sources

I am new to Oracle 9i. At the moment, my organisation is using a lot of Cognos based products to extract and present information to management. We are looking at the option of migrating to Oracle9i, using the Oracle 9i Reports product to pull historical information both in a static and on-the-fly manner. Ultimately, we would like a product to present hyperdimensional data, enabling drill-down into increasingly specific data.

The question I have is of data sources. I have downloaded the trial version of Oracle 9i Developer Suite (by the way, does anyone know how long this trial period lasts? - 30 days?). Looking at otn.oracle.com documentation, it appears as though 9i Reports is able to link to differenet vendor data sources (ie. SqlServer2000) , though I can't find an explanation on how to do this!

I was wondering if the 9i Reports tool requires an intermediary Oracle 9i RDBMS between the different data sources and the 9i Reports tool. For example, in my company, Terradata is used as the main data store of historical information.

At the moment, I am looking to produce a proof-of-concept to see if the Teradata - Oracle 9i Reports bridge idea will work. Further to this, to explore the hyperdimensional aspects of the Reports tool. Any info as to whether it can be done or a 'heads up' to the fact that I am wasting my time would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance,
Andrew Received on Tue Dec 03 2002 - 00:58:41 CET