Hi Derrick
I should say 400 remote users is probably one of the largest installations anywhere in the world!. Technically I'm not aware of any product limits specified by MultiActive, though this installation is and order of magnitude larger than most Max Exchange implementations.
With 400 sites its no surprise that its taking a long time, clearly processing time is related to the size of the database, the amount of change occurring and the proportion of the entire database sent to each distribution site.
The system has to retain change information for every site to which they needs to be sent until the change is acknowledged by all sites. Its therefore important to:
Try to avoid... sites that don't sync regularly
Remove sites that are out of use ASAP.
It think for this size of implementation its good that your on the SQL version though I suspect that the processing would be faster with the Pervasive engine.
I'm afraid I don't think there's too much that can be done other than a big processor, fast disks and memory! and encourage all remotes to sync regularly.
The only other strategy would involve a database redesign to break up the database... with this size of installation I suspect you should be able to get some good advice directly from MultiActive in Vancouver.
Ian Wallace
ian.wallace@cabc.co.uk