Can You Just Turn Answers ‘On’?

I have noticed over the years a common misperception that Oracle Answers is simply an option that you can turn on or off.  I’ve seen it from customers, sales reps (of course) and even experienced OBI consultants.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  This article explores why this is not the cases and what is necessary to deploying Oracle Answers for ad-hoc querying.  This post expands on the differences between Reporting and BI that I discussed in the Using Report Specs for Requirements post.

Recently an IT manger told his business customers that he would just turn Answers on and have it ready for the next weekly deployment.   Now the previous OBI releases were done to meet the needs of a single set of reports, even directing the consulting team to take shortcuts to deliver it as quickly as possible.  And shortcuts were in fact taken; our only goal was to deliver a set of reports that worked with their dashboard prompts.  When the customer asked what it would take to turn Answers on, he was not happy with my answer.