Thanks for the reply. I was going round and round with oracle all day to try and get pricing. An SR could not provide me with a verifiable price list - rather I was quoted "about 15k from the transparent gateway... form an internal price list" and

"...HSODBC Heterogeneous services / ODBC  aka Generic Transparent Gateway" is "free" from oracle..."  but I would need to get the drivers from a third party or informix.

I can see why license compliance can be a service provided by outside vendors....I challange onyone to search the net or oracle site for verifiable licensing costs... :)

Anyways, my os is oracle 9i 2 on solaris, if you have any notes on how this is done please send them to me, I would greatly appreciate it ... all the documentation about this is what Ive come to  label  "circular reference...."

Thanks again
bob