Was wondeing if anyone could give me some info on access file sizes. I need table overheads and storage requirements for each data type @ various field sizes. i.e. an integer field with a max 10 characters would be how big? etc
You can get these with some difficulty... but they won't help you
accurately determine the size of a .mdb file (other than the absolute
minimum possible size; it will always be bigger).
Why? The data in the tables are NOT the only things there. Each
indexed field will have an Index; there are systems tables, of
undocumented structure, containing large BLOB (Binary Large Objects)
fields of undocumented content; your forms and reports are amongst
these, in compiled form; there are temporary tables created by
queries... All of these will be variable.
In addition, Access allocates disk space in 32KByte chunks. When a
database is at (say) 640KBytes, you can add lots of records without
any change at all to the database size; then you'll add two bytes to a
field and the database will grow to 672KBytes.
Your question made sense in the 1970's when disk was expensive. Now
it's under a penny a megabyte. Just compact your database regularly
and tell the IT troglodytes to buzz off!
