Terabyte + Data Warehouses Using Informix & SUN...

We're looking for your advice, experience, and recommendations. We plan to develop a data warehouse, decision support system, initially utilizing medical claims data and then adding a number of smaller external data set. The question we have is whether or not SUN and Informix can handle a data warehouse which will start out at about 500+ GB scaling quickly to over 1 Terabyte and upwards of 3 to 4 Terabytes within a 24 to 36 month time frame (if it works we're probably exceed this size). It is expected that the system would start out averaging between 15 to 20 simultaneous users, but could peak at upwards of 50 to 75 users. It's not unusual with data like this to require between 7 - 10 table joins. What are the critical technical and administrative issues to overcome? A SUN/Oracle solution has also been proposed as an alternate to Informix. Should we be looking at other solutions? I have not been able to locate anyone or any cases of a SUN/Informix data warehouse of this size. Any case study and organizational references you have would be appreciated. The data warehouse combination I see most frequently cited for data warehouses this size uses NCR DB Servers and their Teradata DB. Pros/Cons? Ideas? Problems to take into consideration? Questions for us to ask? Recommendations? Thanks for your advice and feedback. Lloyd... -- Lloyd J. Tribley tribley@vistech.net