The Reporting Portal of Mass Destruction

I've been here since the second week of October, and I was brought in primarily to bring up the "Reporting Portal". 

Since October, the "Reporting Portal" concept has taken many forms:

• Luminis Portal (which has been live since January)
• Oracle Portal
• Something I would custom write
• An authentic town crier, complete with drinking problem and faux colonial accent
• A pony, draped in the finest financial statements
• LOOP (start at the beginning, work back down the list)

I was dragged into a meeting about four weeks ago about "Oracle Reports" (as opposed to Oracle Discoverer or Cognos), which the Portal was not intended for and I know nothing about. I sat in the meeting, didn't know why I was there, and was told when I left the meeting "oh I guess we didn't need you here."

Can you see where this is going?

Two weeks ago, people starting asking me questions about Oracle Reports (five weeks ago I didn't know Oracle had a product called "Reports") and Perl (which was used to write out front-end to 6i Reports four years ago). 

The rest of the details are boring, but here's the good news: I found out at 11:00am this morning I have 36 hours to make Oracle reports work inside Oracle Portal, lest our Banner 7 upgrade be cancelled and we're all shot out of a cannon.

Figuratively, of course. You work for the circus for three years, and suddenly you have to qualify that fucking analogy.