title: Can you bypass the size limit of SQL Server Express by stacking databases?
body: <p>My company is working on a development project using SQL Server 2008 Express. The amount of data we plan to store in our main table will quickly exceed the 4GB size limit of Express. We can buy ourselves some time with SQL Server 2008 R2, but eventually we will surpass the 10GB limitation as well.</p>
  
  <p>The team lead wants to hear all available options before purchasing licenses for Standard Edition. The expertise available in our company is SQL Server and Oracle, so using MySQL or PostgresSQL would be considered a last resort. </p>
  
  <p>The only alternative I can think of is a design where the main table is horizontally partitioned into separate, distinct databases. In addition, there would be a central database to store the information about where the data was stored.</p>
  
  <p>For example, all of the table data for 2008 would be stored in DB_2008, 2009 data in DB_2009, and so on. The metadata table might look like this: </p>
  
  <pre><code>PKStartDate  PKEndDate   DBName
  -----------  ----------  ----------
  2008-01-01   2008-12-31  DB_2008
  2009-01-01   2009-12-31  DB_2009
  2010-01-01   2010-12-31  DB_2010
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>This table would be used to determine the database location of the data for our stored procedures. Most of our code already uses parameterized, dynamic SQL, so this would not be difficult to implement. </p>
  
  <p>Has anyone ever done this before? </p>
  
  <p>Is there an established model for this type of design or is it just a horrible idea? </p>