need lots of ideas - begining phase of project

[markP]

I have this inner-office project to build some kind of repository of upcoming projects with a front-end that has a way to track the progress of each. I see the content sitting in a SQL dB. If you look at the image I uploaded you’ll see my first idea for the look of the front end. The hierarchy starts from the bottom with a calendar then timeline type of navigation. I’m thinking the year’s section will scroll since it’ll have to show around 5 years worth (or more). Each red tic mark indicates a projects update with the height of the tic representing importance of different projects. Different projects could be different colors. Clicking a tic will bring up a description of the update and another timeline of that specific project with more detailed information that can be shown. The red outlined boxes indicate 3 different project managers that deal with scouting, producing, following up/communication of each project. So now that you have an idea of what needs to be done I’m looking for some professional opinions on:

Is Flash best for this or would normal ASP web pages be better and why?
Will Flash handle this with SQL?
Know of any cool sites for ideas of this kind of graphical show of information?
Does the graphical representation of the content make sense or do you have some cool/better ideas you’d like to share?
Does it need more?

Thanks in advance and if you have any questions I’d be glad to tell you all I can so the ideas can flow. I’m just kinda stuck with ideas right now and can use your help.

MP