-----Original Message-----
I have designed a database for pilots flying times at my
squadron. It works great with several forms used to
enter data. There are two tables. One stores the
personal info of each pilot (name, medical due, checkride
dates etc) the other table links by a common number for
each unique pilot and holds the individual flight times
and sequences flown for each flight a pilot makes. My
concern is that the flight table is and will become quite
large over time. Is there something I should do about
this? How big can / should a table grow? I would expect
the table to hold about 2000 records by years end.
Cheers
Kev T
.
"large" is a relative term, and number of records doesn't
really tell the story. you need to consider several things:
what's the size of the database file (2 MB, 20 MB) now,
and how big to you project that it will be by year-end?
is your database on your PC's hard drive, or on a network?
how is it performing so far, fast or slow?
the max size for an Access database is 2 GB, if i recall
correctly, so the issue is not primarily capacity but
rather performance. suggest you be sure to compact your
database regularly - daily or every time you use it,
whichever is longer - and back it up. keep an eye on the
size and pay attention to performance speed. if it's on a
network, that includes paying attention to whether it
noticeably slows the network down for other users.
if performance becomes an issue, then you'll want to
delete old records, or move them into an archive database.
fyi, suggest you take a look at your table design. one way
to save space is to make sure number fields are not a
larger data type than they need to be, as:
don't use Double unless you'll be storing fractions, such
as 1.5.
from Long Integer, Integer and Byte number data types (all
whole number fields, no fractions), choose the smallest
one that can house your data. for instance, a field that
stores a month value as a number 1 - 12, should use data
type Byte, not Long Integer!
you can read up on number data types by opening a table in
design view, add a field with Data Type set to Number.
then click in Field Size on the General tab, and press F1
to bring up the topic in the Help file.
BE CAREFUL - if you change a field's data type in a table
that already has data in it, and if the data type is too
small to house the existing data, you could lose data. if
you're going to do that, try it on a COPY of the table
first!!
