I don't really work with databases, but would MySQL be able to handle a database with 300,000,000+ entries in it (entire U.S. Population)? And, how much space do you think that would take up?

How much data per entry? If optimized, it *should* be able to handle it, but you'll need to have quite a bit of disk space, and a nice fast server with LOTS of RAM to make it do anything...

What is the purpose of this?

Jantman: My work is going to collect some data on a sample size of the US population, do some analysis and modeling, and then spit it back out. I am guessing that each data in an entry will contain things like gender, height, weight, health, ethnicity, locale, age, income, etc...

I am not sure of the details of this project, but I was just informed this morning that I need to look into a database that can handle the US Population, and much more. It won't be accessed heavily, only by a few researchers and students. So you think a Pentium 4 with 2GB of RAM and a 500GB hard drive will be enough?

I have already started to read up on my MySQL reference books.

Sounds like a pretty good machine. At least worth a try. You could always write a script to fill the DB with pseudo-random data and give it a whirl...

As mysql claims this amount of data server can handle easly so I see no problem at all.