When my son says to me, in six years time, 'Mummy, tell me about data warehouses,' I shall settle down in the sofa next to him, adopt a far-away gaze, and launch into a story that would vie with any other piece of barely-comprehendable nostalgia. And he will gasp with wonderment and say 'but surely you didn't have to wait more than five minutes for a report to run? And why was defining a set of report parameters so clunky? And why, why did every keystroke hang the computer for minutes at a time?' And I'll say to him, 'Son, in those dark days you had to shoulder all sorts of unspeakable burdens to get access to perfectly straightforward data. Consider yourself blessed that you live in the post-Data Warehouse age.' And he will look relieved, and go off to jack in to his super-cool 3D virtual game pod.

Our distributor has just 'upgraded' to Cognos 8. To get access to this and the comedically ancient system that is Vista I pay £40 a month. Can I have my money, and my data, back, please?