Aaron,

>I'm not being naive, but it is reality... AND I hate those database programmers being so ignored about the real world, setting a surname field to C(255)... and so... making each record to be 5K-6K large...

Bad design is bad design whereever it occurs.

>David, you should think in wider propectives...

That's exactly what I'm doing.

>Todays, everything come and go via connections...

If you don't need the time portion sent across the wire, use a view that trims it off. The year span being greater is more important than the time potion in most cases.