• I question the use of DTS/SSIS. The fact is you can get the data out using simple select statements qualified by your create and edit dates. The only place you will hit blocking is when the OLTP app is updating a record you are reading. But, you hit that whether you are using replication or mirroring or a script with no overhead.

    There is peformance downside using DTS or SSIS over T-SQL scripts. Assuming you properly index the OLTP database, then your incremental queries fire dramatically faster than the gui intensive interfaces and/or runtime libraries of the CLR.

    Except for the loading routines (which will bite you hard when all your databases get really big) you have the right idea and I WISH everyone used staging and reporting databases for reporting. There are so many opportunities to build servers using instances and memory isolation that there is never a reason NOT to have a reporting database.

    Don