On Wed, 2004-05-12 at 12:05, Fred Pratt wrote:

> Excellent info! The 40gb table limit will be a small problem for us, but not
> insurmountable.
> Thanks much,
> Fred

A 40GB table comes about for 1 of 2 reasons, first it could be not
normalized enough, or there is too much data. Any good SQL book should
deal with the first. I think the second needs discussion.

What often happens, is it's not too much data, it's too much data in
"hot" storage. Most of that data should really be in "cold" storage.
Take invoices for example, do you really need 10 years worth of invoices
immediately available? Probably not, once they are paid, only
government or company auditors might ever look at them. So it doesn't
really matter if they take a while to access. Printed copies waste
trees, but electronic copies don't. A Good way to get archival copies,
is to print them to PS or PDF files and ship them off to a service
bureau for printing on microfiche, the fiche is good long term storage,
and it will likely still be usable in 50 years let alone 10.

Another item with invoices, is what data is required, it may simply be,
invoice number, customer number, total before tax, each tax total, total
after tax, and paid total. So storing all of the invoice detail may not
be required either.....


Paul