I have an idea and here is the breakdown

400 locations

1 server per location

different data in the local db at each location

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Now there has to be away for all the dbases to merge into 1 master db

The flow chart above shows what i am thinking.

I have been trying out a bunch of nix distro's and i like opensuse for this. For the db i think mysql if it will run on opensuse

Well suggestions guys i need them honest only

Edited April 15, 200719 yr by BizTalk

from the pic you want to use apache and php

I would suggest the db servers have MySql or PostGreSQL, there are free and php has connectivity to both. Then use a php script that runs from a cron job to export the slave databases and insert them as tables in the master db. The overall functionality is still down to you, but it could be an esasy implementation.

ya this is pretty easy from what im understanding. you just want to upload data from the "sub databases" to the "main database" ?

have you worked with php and mysql? if not its easy to learn. it would be very easy to create a script to upload the entire "sub database" to the "main database".

php is easy to use when dealing with mysql, and if you are not totally sure of the commands you need i would suggest installing apache+php+mysql+phpMyAdmin on a computer first. Using phpMyAdmin you can create/modify/delete etc on any database. It also gives you a breakdown of the sql command implemented

e.g.

$query = "DELETE FROM lic WHERE rid LIKE 'batman' ";

in phpMyadmin it will print in the page

DELETE FROM lic WHERE rid LIKE 'batman'

If you really want to make life easy consider using XAMPP for Linux (it was called LAMPP but was renamed. it stands for Linux + Apache +MvSQL + Perl + PHP. This installs on any linux distro and has apache+perl+php+mysql alreday configured to work with each other.