Converting local db to server db *on demand*

I have an interesting situation in our MIS department, and I would like some feedback from others who might have a similar problem.

We have quite a few analysts who create custom tables, mostly in Paradox, and then run ad hoc queries against those tables. Since the tables are normally stored on a Novell server, you can well imagine that this creates a lot of net traffic that we would like some way to avoid.

An alternative would be to put the tables on an SQL-based server like Sybase. This would cut down on the net traffic from ad hoc queries. The problem with this solution is that servers rarely lend themselves to ease of use in creating, maintaining, and populating the tables. We want the analysts to have a lot of freedom in making arbitrary changes to their analysis tables, and we don't want to have to turn them all into DBAs in order to allow them to do this on a server.

Is there a way to compromise the two positions: to let the analysts create the tables locally under Paradox, but to give them a way to do the ad hoc queries via SQL (or something like it)? One thought was to build a product that runs as a daemon on the server that would automatically take the Paradox table, create a Sybase table based on it, and then populate the Sybase table from the Paradox table. Another alternative would be some product that acted as an SQL-server, but ran against Paradox tables.

Do any existing product solutions to this problem exist? Any alternative approaches we might pursue?

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Will Estes		Internet: westes_at_netcom.com