Using SAP BI front-end on external data sources

We are currently reviewing the BI technical strategy at our organisation and SAP BI is in the running where we have a need to cover more data sources than just R/3.
Because of the investment made in building other reporting databases, in the short to medium term we are considering using SAP BI as the front-end.
I have built a Virtual InfoProvider using DTP on a SQL Server database, and initial findings are interesting.
I would also like to consider other methods of using SAP BI as a front-end, and this post is a plea for further options.
Some of the existing reports that we need to replace would be based on views in the database, whereas others are driven by result sets from stored procedures.
I am curious about where all the effort is made, for example, will all the filtering be applied at source or back in BW?
Will a user-entry variable allow a lookup to the source?
We have recently upgraded to NW2004s, although we have not implemented the Java Stack .... yet.  We intend to complete the implementation by May 2008.
I would welcome any suggestions you might have, or if you are able to point me to further sources of information.
Ian.

The Web Analyzer within BI 7.0 JAVA run time can go against XMLA datasources (eg: MS Analysis Services) configured within EP system.
Visual Composer available within Ep 7 can go against any JDBC sources (Web Analyzer will have this functionality in the future.).

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