[AccessD] Access / SQL question

[Ryan W]

We have our primary application in Access with a SQL back end. That
said..... money is tight at the office and upgrading SQL server is not a
high priority for us to get some more sweet window functions and all the
great advancements since SQL Server 2008.

Have any of you spun up an instance of SQL Express on another server, or
the local (desktop) machines to handle some query processing for new
features, while still utilizing your older server/back end?

Does that make sense?

Say I query some data out of SQL Server 2008, I need to perform some
LEAD/LAG (example) so that data gets pushed/stored in SQL Express 2017
temporarily for crunching/processing, the results spit back out into a
report or datasheet or what have you?

I realize there are ways to mimic some window functions (like LEAD/LAG) but
man it would be so much nicer not to have to work around these limitations.