Info on large tables wanted

Hello out there!

I am just planning a new Reporting Application for a large chain of bakeries. I have done already applications like this, but not with that amount of Data.

Roughly, the Bakery has 120 Shops.
Each Bakery has about 500 Customers per Day Each customer buys 2 Different Items in Average. There are about 100 different Items.

so this makes
120*500*2 = 120000 Items bought per day
120000*6 = 720000 per week
720000*50 =36.000.000 per Year with 300 buisness days

Raw data is delivered in the following Format

Shop-ID Integer
Item-Id Integer
Item Amount Float
Item Price Float
Timestamp DateTime

I need to build a database where each Item is stored with the above Data, so they can make Reports on when particular Items sell best eg.

Is there a problem with tables that contain 36.000.000 records? maybe they want to accumulate 5 Year of Sales Data, so this would make over 150.000.000 records.

I have done several tests with about 10.000.000 Dummy Records on my test machine.
AMD2000, 1GB Ram, Index Tablespace on a seperate harddisk and the like, the response time was quite satisfactory, but will it be with 20 times the data?

Has anybody experience with such large Tables? How big are your Databases (number of Records) What machines do you use?

Any comments welcome!

regards
MV Received on Sun Jun 06 2004 - 15:27:21 CDT