> The reason why there are multiple DB's is because there are
> several products
> within the Company that can be sold individually. As the customer
> requirements grow they are able to update the system, hence the database
> requirements also grow. In our case, some customers are very small and
> would never update their system to the full blown range of products (ie,
> there are several products that can work independantly but share
> common data
> when used as a complete system).
>
> We thought about adding tables to a single database but the main argument
> against this is that we can sell product A (which, for example, uses
> database d_a and d_common) and then at a later time sell product
> B that has
> database d_b and shares data from d_common. Since the content of
> databases
> d_a and d_b are totally unrelated it does not make sense to bunch it all
> into one big database. As the Company grows, and hence the range of
> products sold grows, we would end up with one big ugly monster.
> The shared
> data across multiple databases is designed to prevent corruption which may
> result.
>
> danieL

I do the same thing but I don't end up with an "ugly monster which gets
corrupted". I end up with an "elegant solution" :-)
Alan