hi

I have a situation where a database is constantly updated with new records - no records are deleted, only added. I may not modify the database. The added records need to be copied to another system. how can I keep track of which records have been copied to the other system, as I may not duplicate the records on the other system and may not query that system.

What is the best possible way to do this? can I keep a duplicate of say the primary keys in a second database and write a query to compare the first with the second and extract only the non-duplicated keys? What happens when the database becomes MASSIVE?

thanks!

since you cannot update the first system, and you cannot even query the second, then yes, you will need some kind of extra table

(what kind of weird setup is it where they want you to do INSERTs into a database but not be able to do a SELECT on it?)

as to what happens when the database becomes "massive" -- i'll tell you what happens, they'll come back to you and say "help, our database is massive, we need you to clean it up" and then they'll have to give you DELETE permissions...

rudy
http://rudy.ca/

Well the weird setup would be something like SAP, where you CAN query before adding but I worry about how slow that would be.... I suppose if the records had a time or date stamp I could query the lastest entry in SAP and search for the records greater than that date / time in the other database (sorted by date)
And to be honest I am just doing a little research so I am not sure that records won't be deleted, I just want to prepare for the worst case senario.

thanks for advice!