Can I get the IAF products for trial?

Yes. You can download the trial version of IAF Vista Java Client Edition from www.iafsoft.com/downloads/products/. If you need the IAF Vista HML Edition or IAF Coaster for trial, please contuct us from here.

Which language are the IAF products supporting?

We are now supporting only English. The Japanese version will be available in June, 2003.

What is difference between IAF Coaster and OEM/AW Manager? Do they compete?

OEM and AW Manager are both tools that manage OLAP Catalog metadata and the physical OLAP cubes from star/snow-flake schemas on the RDBMS. With OEM/AW Manager, the IT staff has to change the source schema if the business users�f needs change. IAF Coaster provides a virtual metadata layer and has additional functions like "Virtual Hierarchy" and "Value-based Segmentation" that helps IT staff to manage the analytic cubes without changing the source schema. IAF Coaster is a more business-oriented tool than OEM. (Note: AW Manager has not been launched by Oracle as of 2/25/03.)

What is difference between IAF Vista and Discoverer? Do they compete?

Discoverer is suitable for general BI needs like query and reporting, accessing relational tables as data sources and distributing static reports to large number of users. IAF Vista is optimized for OLAP-style advanced analysis, using multidimensional analytic cubes as the data source. It is designed for use by analytic producers who may also want to share "live" reports with analytic consumers. IAF Vista does not compete with Discoverer. They complement each other to satisfy 100% of users' BI needs.

Can IAF Vista only access the OLAP cubes that were created by IAF Coaster?

No. Whether the IT staff uses OEM/AW Manager or IAF Coaster to manage the analytic cubes, the same metadata, called Oracle OLAP Catalog, is created, and IAF Vista (or other BI Beans applications) can access the analytic cubes.

Can I use IAF Vista with Oracle9i R2 OLAP 9.2.0.1.0?

IAF Vista can access to 9.2.0.1.0a or later. We recommend you to upgrade your Oracle OLAP to 9.2.0.2 because this version fixed some critical bugs. You can get the patchset #2632931 from Oracle Metaling (http://metalink.oracle.com/) to upgrade from 9.2.0.1.0 to 9.2.0.2.