External BAQ without MSSql

In case anyone else wondered...
I put in a call to Epicor and the answer is External BAQs can only access data through SQL.
I've been successful in creating a Crystal report with ODBC connections to SQL views on Epicor and Open4 tables. The views were created with DBVisualizer. I wanted to see if I could create an external BAQ if we decide we'd like a dashboard with combined information. I can get the test connection to work, but I get a "Progress OpenEdge Wire Protocol Driver Table/View/Synonym not found (7519)" error and no tables are available. In reading thru Epicor help and answerbooks on external BAQs I noticed they say "create an ODBC connection to an MS SQL Server". It looks like the only way to use an external BAQ is if you have MS SQL server available. Would someone verify this for me or let me know if they know of a workaround for this? Thanks!

Sue