[dba-Tech] database

The first question I'd ask, and doubtless you did, is, "How frequently will
the old data ever be needed?" And the followup, "How far back?" Presumably
the answer is a gradient, something like "the past five years, once a
month; the previous five years before that, once a quarter or year; and the
rest once in a blue moon."

My reasoning is this. I'd prefer (SQL licensing and version permitting) to
partition the tables across several hard disks, leaving only the past 5
years or so immediately accessible, and hitting the remote hard disks and
partitions only occasionally. This would sidestep the need for any
additional code or restore-procedures, etc. IIRC, this capability is
available only in the more expensive licensing agreements and versions,
which is why I asked about those.

Another take on this, with similar perspective, is based on the simple
notion that there is a "contemporary" window, beyond which data will never
change. That suggests a possible move of all that old data into an Analysis
Services database, which would be de-normalized and with all its counts and
sums all available in pre-calculated form. That would require some serious
space, but on the other hand, what in this business is cheaper than disk
space?

Arthur