HI Steve,

I only use separate databases when rolling out Fx to managers and have a number of clients that approach the 20 database separation. Brian Stief provided me with a structure many years ago that I have used and adapted over time. I do not want managers accessing the same database as I believe that there are problems with multiple uses in the same
financial reporter modules whether that is in FX or GL (I could be wrong as this may have been fixed a few upgrades ago). Once setup the management of 20 or more databases is not a big deal. I think Brian has clients with many more datasets that 20 being updated on a nightly basis.

We used to run into problems updating databases when users did not log off their FX session and held the files open causing the retrieve process to fail and hang (ultimately consuming lanpaks). Russel Harder who works with my client base as well as his own, came up with the idea of having a second "update" database for each "live" fx database. What we do is do the retrieve on the "update" database and then use an xcopy to copy all the files in the "update" folder over the files in the "live" folder. No more "hanging" FX retrieve processes and clean data retrieves each night.

For my and my client base, who often have non-sequential department numbers being brought into a specific dataset, the management of department security is far too cumbersome and prone to mistakes.

If you would like to discuss this further, give me a call.