Quote from j2ee:
I don't expect my database to be anything close to 10GB limit yet so it is fine for me for now.
Really? What do you backtest? 1 market, 1 strategy, 1 set of parameters fof 1 month?
My current backtest database of the last month has 1.06 billion trades stored which is - compressed with the table compression feature of sql server non-free - 30gb, plus 1.7 billion executions in 52gb (not compressed). That is new since a schema change about 2 weeks ago. When "hitting the computers" we add about 100 million trades per 24 hour period - sometimes more, sometimes less.
The bar data we generate for visualizations (charts) and that is 1 minute (note: this is not what is traded- just for visualizing) has (and there are gaps - the routine has issues, this is a new code part, part of the "lets see things fast on a graph") has 94 milllion rows in (compressed) 3.4gb. That is 80% compressed - a feature the free version does not have.
Note that all that does not count the 340gb of compressed tick data - that is outside the database. Heck, my backtest work control tables cover 600mb already with 1.8 million tasks that were executed.
Seriously, assuming 10gb is going to last means you are not using any sensible set of backtests and optimizations.
If I were you I would get:
* a proper scalable database. Not saying "download an illegal copy" but you HAVE to have something that scales.
* Remember to get a nice 512gb SSD for the data, as a start.
But assuming you can run that on 10gb means you have to throw away results pretty much immediately (the ninja trader model).