Dan:
You'll never get near the 2GB limit. There's about a 50MB overhead just because, and then consider that data collection grabs about 5K per device and an event is around <1K. With the rule of thumb of a maximum of 500 devices and 5,000 events, raw data is around 7.5MB. Ballpark it to say that indexes and other overhead doubles that and it's 15MB. Each historical data collection takes about 2.5MB, so even doubling that, it would be upwards of 150 historical data collection samples to even approach 1GB.
As far as 'managing' the database, HP SIM does its own housekeeping and the only user is the HP SIM user (even if there are multiple users of HP SIM), so the only thing necessary really is backups.
QA is as expensive (sometimes even more) than the development of the product itself. Qualifying a database is a non-trivial expense. Our objective is to support a 'free' database option and an enterprise database option for each OS. With MSDE/SQL and now Oracle for Windows and PostgreSQL/Oracle for HP-UX and Linux, that objective has been met. Some people may prefer MySQL over PostgreSQL, but we aren't contemplating the expense of qualifying MySQL for a preference or like. (BTW, MySQL lacked a few necessary features at the time HP SIM was originally being developed which is what led to PostgreSQL).
It is possible that Oracle 8i would "work," but any call-in support would be unable to assist you since it hasn't been specifically qualified.
