How is the overall performance of the CTE method for extracting a point-in-time view of your data? Is it fast enough to handle reporting on demand?
I haven't done any specific volume testing on this. All I can say is that I'm using it in production systems, without any noticeable performance hit. Obviously storing the data inline is going to be faster, but to what degree I honestly don't know.
I'm one of those developers who will often choose the elegant solution over the fastest solution, providing it is fast enough for the application being developed.
Regards,
David.