Thanks to all for the excellent input. In my case security is not a factor; the application will run internally on the corporate LAN/WAN. The segreation of data...

Thanks to all for the responses. I am planning on using the database we are developing in as the source master and replicating to the other databases using the...

Thanks for your response. I'm not exactly sure what you mean by 'ad hoc' queries, but the stored procedures will be exactly the same for each business unit. ...

Thanks for the response. One inherent advantage of this application is the number of transactions will be minimal and some delay in response time is ok, so the additional...