Hello,
I am researching into integrating our multi-tenant MS-SQL-based SaaS ERP solution with WebFOCUS.

Not unlike other advanced ERP systems, such as SAP, etc. that are data interpretation issues unique to presenting our data. These involve, but are not limited to UTF-8 encoding, date-time conversions required based on context, user-defined schema name (column name) translation into jargon (not language), etc.
I am interested in ways to solve those issues in the BI tool, but I have strategic reasons for trying to solve them outside. An outside solution, between the BI application and our DB Servers would be for instance a customer data provider, such as a SQL Server ADO.NET Data Provider, or maybe even the more ambitious thought of a custom ODBC data driver. Since we are SaaS ERP, it doesn’t server any BI vendor to make a custom adaptor to link to us, since we’d be the only customer of such an adaptor as we host the software for all our customers. However, suppose I waved a wand and had such a thing, I would feel I would be in a better position to integrate with any BI vendor and the problems I solved I would have solved once and in one spot in code that we control. Also, this would be strategic in that it would be leveraged by internal, customer BI tools we present to our customers (ODBC access, ad-hoc SQL authoring, etc.) that for the foreseeable future we’d continue to offer any support alongside third-party BI.

My question, then, is there anyone that has gone down or seriously researched such an approach? Is there any lessons learned or warnings you could offer me?

I’ve already Googled and learned much of what is out there and for our in-house developed tools we have experience with leveraging third-party developed products from Progress DataDirect. I am especially interesting in real-world, first-hand experience from anyone that has developed such a solution and would share even at a high level their experience.

Thank you.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Kerry,

Have you asked IBI ?

Yes, and all the IBI staffers I have interacted with are really great - very pro-customer service and respecting our process here.

However, I still feel it is worthwhile to fish around to see if any WebFOCUS user that is not an IBI employee has done or even tried what I am considering and what their experience was.