yes, the question is a bit vague, but I was not asking a specific design question, just a general question looking specific experience.
The amount of data that I am handling is two years of transactions in a $2 billion construction company, because the IT department is underfunded with reporting and analysis as someone else's job. The current analytical process here is to use excel and you can't run a 2 billion company on excel. IT uses SQL server 2000, and they don't allow me access to the servers, i am in finance, not IT.
either I wait for the three years of IT projects to be completed, or I do it myself. I am only allowed a PC, which the company has limitations on, such as 80 gig HD maximim, no 64 bit software allowed, and no 64 bit chipsets allowed, and they told me that no one needs more than a gig of RAM, ever.
Now, the data sets are large, and when trying to build an Access output table in the requested format, with all tables properly indexed, the first month table build did not finish after 14 hours, and i have 24 months to process to catch up. ..
I hit the two gig limit, and had to split the datasets down as far as possible, stripped out all the currently non essential data, and with 24 months, the largest database is 1.5 gigs.
so the next step without working in IT and without trying to spend alot of money, is a question about SQL Server 2005 express. . .
As far as the general questions go, I appreciate the conceptual questions, however, they dont' really help me when looking for specific experience, and so, the answer is still I will try it and see what happens. . .
if you have any experience in using the above combination, then i would appreciate reading any suggestions.
sportsguy