>Hi all
>
>One application, one (FireBird) database, one set of remote views; it all fine and well. Is it possible in this same setup to get data also from a second (FireBird) database?
>
>The reason being, the current application's summary report needs, say, previous year(s) similar figures also on the same report for comparison purposes.
>
>This raises a second, design, question. Multiple year's data I generally have the liking to have in separate databases (and app copy). Not just because it will bring in data faster because there is only one year's worth of data in it, but also (in my belief) safeguards against the application and data structure revisions I have had to perform over the years due to taxation requirements - old data needs old reports in old format and I can only allow the latest version of this report to be supported for all practical purposes, else users will run the old report against new data and raise unnecessary heartaches. Any advise on this front too?

For financial stuff we did the same (back in fpd2.6 days), but also provided a full read-only copy of the app (data, reports, executable, everything) in some archive subdirectory. So the users could get their info, if they knew in which year it was. They were grateful for that, felt assured that their data were there and accessible when needed, and that there would be no accidental changes in the old archived and final-reported data.

After a number of years I got the process mostly automated - any documents with the date no later than 31. December would be copied over to the subdirectory, their balances (at various levels) carried over as initial balances for the new year, and the remaining records would just stay as they were. It would only take one last copy of the executable to do manually (or that was automated too, don't remember).