>>>1. What the latest greatest version of Oracle?
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>>>2. Once this oracle box is in place on our network, and I interface to it as an ODBC data source, is there anything the Service Provider can do (in oracle) that would prevent me from getting full access to the data stored there? (The current system prevents me from getting to certain tables and certain fields in other tables)
>>>
>>>3. Any idea why This Service Provider might have originally announced/designed/promoted this new Client-Server box to be Informix platform and now close to release time they suddenly switch gears and say it will be Oracle?
>>>
>>>I finally get my chance to corner this Service Provider on Monday 11/24/97 so any input to these questions will be very helpful. TIA!!
>>
>>In addition to what Mark said, Informix (which is actually a leader compared to Oracle in the data warehouse field) is on very shakey financial grounds, and might not survive. So, their switch to Oracle makes sense from that point of view.
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>>Hank
>
>Thanks Hank... you make interesting point here, do you have experience with interfacing VFP applications with/supporting a data warehousing system?

Yes, but not the kind your talking about. I'm in the wrapup stage of an app that will produce rollups of retail data for open-to-buy analysis (and also do the analysis). In this case, there are a limited # of dimensions, so I can do rollups covering all possibilities right from Fox. I don't care where the initial data comes from. And the number of users (maximum of 20, I would think, even in the largest of organizations we're dealing with) couldn't possibly tax a native VFP server. In addition, since it's a data warehouse, there is no great need for transaction integrity, so it would silly to incur the slowdown associated with client-server based solutions. I could do it OK (the rollup routine is a separate .exe -- drop a new one in, and the OTB application will run fine), there's just no point to it.

Hank