Edmond-

>The data comes in as all text. Even “numeric” data is in text format. Getting rid of any padding doesn’t seem to help much because I had created an ASCII Delimited Text file from my 2 Gig dbf and the text file was almost 2 Gig itself.

I don't understand. YOu say the data comes in that format...but aren't you processing it? I mean, isn't the data we're talking about your clients' data once it's been massaged? If that's the case then why are you restricted to type of data?

>That Help file idea bears thinking about. Interesting idea. The data comes from the post office. It is a list of every street, building, apartment, etc in the country and the range of deliverable addresses. It also has information in order to match street nicknames, add the zip+4, add the carrier route, etc. The idea is to take an address from the client’s mailing list, massage it to get it into standard format and try and fix any errors, and then match it with the national database in order to supply the zip+4 extension, carrier route, and other necessary information. There will have to be a number of queries against the data by state, or city, or street name, etc. so I’m not sure how the Help idea would work in this case. The queries would all be figured out on the fly depending on what information is in the original address, how bad a form it is in, and if any matches can be made early on.

Even more confused. _What_ data is on the CD? The client's data post-massaging? Or the P.O. data? Or both? Do you send each month the new P.O. data to your client? Who then runs your application against the P.O. data?

>A DVD would be out of the question. I would have to stay competitive with the other vendors and they are all distributing the data on CD. Delivering 10 CD’s every other month (that’s how often the post office publishes new files) would also be out of the question.

Do your clients run the application and data from the CD, or could they install it from CD to a local harddrive? In which case why not just use an installation routine?

>Do you know of any other database who’s data is this compressed? Paradox (DB) or whatever?

If I was looking to market a product with existing stiff competition, I'd first own copies of probably 2 of the best competition, and I'd find out what the data really is that's on the CD.

We don't really at this point have any idea of what those other guys are doing.