very very newbie (sorry!)

[deathwindcloudmaster@xxxxxxxx]

hello
i need to extract data from oracle DataBase 10g, and transform data in xml 
files. your octopus will do the job i think, but i have a silly question 
about how works your octopus:

in help manual, i have:

?Source database URL? - defines the URL (full path) to source database 
(e.g.localhost:1433/Together1).

my first question is:
oracle must be started, mounted, etc for this, or you can just have an oracle 
database save to use your octopus? (.dbf?)

second question :
Customers relation management softwares are built using differents Data bases.
do you know if octopus could extract informations from CRM?

thanks for all your answers, and please, i beg your pardon for my poor 
english!