At 30/08/2002 10:43 AM, you wrote:

>Daniel,
>
> > I know hard-drives are cheap and 16GB is not
> > much nowadays for todays hard-drives, but imagine if the
> > regional databases
> > are 20GB each(for the same scenario the server would have to
> > be able to handle 160GB of file storage).
>
>Let me give you any idea of how cheap.
>
>I just purchased a dual P3-1.4Ghz cpu unit with 1Gb of RAM, Mylex dual
>channel controller with 32Mb of cache, a 36Gb boot drive and 4x73Gb (all
>HDs are Ultra 160/SCSI III) -- providing 220Gb of usage disk storage.
>
>All for the low price of $9,810 CDN (About $6,500 USD)!!

It all comes down to how much is the client willing to pay. I know that
the disk space will not be an issue for the first year or 2, but if they
start doing imaging with the software and you might be talking about large
images, then the space might become an issue. But, then again I can think
of more than one solution to solve the problem before it actually becomes one.

My point is: I can see a few reasons why a person might want the cross-db
selects. One of them as I stated is for reporting. Another might be
import data from another database into the one that you are working with,
without having to write an application specific for it, the user would
simply have to create the insert statement(i.e.: INSERT INTO TABLE
(VALUES) SELECT FIELDS FROM DBALIAS::TABLE). For this to work, evidently
the user must have read access rights to the other database. An example of
usage: Archive data into another database, so that the primary db doesn't
contain data that is no longer being used for day-to-day operations. But,
if someone wants to create a comparative report using the archived data and
the recent data, then they would have to pump that data into a temporary
table in order to generate the report.

I think it's enough said on IB-Support. If you think there might be more
to discuss, we can take it over to IB-Architect.


Daniel Rail
Senior System Engineer
ACCRA Group Inc. (www.accra.ca)
ACCRA Med Software Inc. (www.accramed.ca)