creative ideas on problem needed

Hello! I am looking for creative ideas to the following situation.
Currently I receive multiple .dbf files coming in from multiple locations at
the end of the day. I then use DTS to bring those files into their
appropriate tables in a sql database.
However, now we would like to get the information real time from these
multiple locations that are on our WAN. So there are multiple remote.db
databases sitting on different workstations on the WAN that we would like to
get data from and pull back to our central MS Sql 2000 database. It can pol
l
every 15 minutes, every time an update hits remote.db, or every
hour...Doesn't matter, we just don't want to wait until the end of the day.
We can easily install an application on the remote workstations that have
remote.db on.
Any high level ideas are appreciated! Using any technologies...
Thanks, AshleyTAshley,
Have you looked in to the Replication capabilities of SQL Server?
Barry|||Why don't you use replication?|||Can I get the data from a Sybase Adaptive SqlAnywhere databases acrosse the
WAN?
Thank you,
"Alexander Kuznetsov" wrote:

> Why don't you use replication?
>|||>> we would like to get the information real time from these
multiple locations that are on our WAN. <<
A 15 minute cycle is not real time. Have you looked at products that
are designed for streaming data? Stonebraker's Streambase, Kx Systems,
etc. are built to handle things like stock market feeds in real time.

Creating Linked Servers

I'm new to this aspect of SQL Server so bear with me here. I have 2 SQL Servers (2000) in seperate locations on separate IPs. From what I'm reading and from what I've tried using Enterprise manager, the only way I can link the other server is by using the IP address as the name. Is there a way that I can specify a "user-friendly" name which will be used to reference tables on the linked server in queries?

This is the first time I've run across something that none of my books, nor the books online seem very clear about. Keep that in mind when replying, please. I may need the remedial course for this. <grin>

Any help is appreciated.

Thanks.On the machine that you will be registrying the Linked Servers, if you can not ping the SQL Server name of the other 2 ?

c:\> ping MyServer

But you can ping the IP addresses

c:\> ping xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

Then you can create "user friendly" names 2 ways.

1) Add the 2 servers to the LMHOST file of the server or
2) Us SQL Server Client Network Utility to define Alias for these 2 servers.

The second method is the easiest since it is straight forward and you are using SQL Server tools. The first way is more of a global definition, that defines an alias that can be used by all commands and tools (ie net use). Where as the second method is strickly SQL Server realm.

Make sure that you use TCP/IP as your Network Library when defining the aliases (method 2).