mdb file size

  • Thread starter Thread starter Charles London
  • Start date Start date
C

Charles London

Front end file size growing at an alarming rate while the
back end where all the data is located is relatively small.

I created a fairly simple scheduling system for a local
school system. The front end only contains forms,
reports, queries and modules. The back end contains all
my data. Right now the back end file is 656kb and the
front end file is 1560kb. I have the data base set up so
that when ever the user exits the application it compacts
both the front and back end files. If I turn off the
compacting the front end grows wildly like up to 9.5MB.

I've rebuilt both front and back from scratch. I've
upgraded from 2000 to 2002. And other tactics that didn't
work either.

My problem is that since this file will not fit on a
floppy any more and the school's computer only has a
floppy drive I can't take copies of the file home for
rework and upgrades.

Any idea what is going on?
 
The real solution is generally to avoid the use of temp tables.

Of course also not adding graphics, or "background" pictures the application
ill also help.

When you use temp tables, then the space is not recovered until you do a
compact. In fact, for the last 20 years, a lot of the popular pc database
systems do not recover deleted records etc until you tell the system to do
so. Even the old dos based dbaseIII programs had a "pack" command to remove
the deleted records.

Here is some reading on this issue. I would also say that you might try
giving your users a mde in place of a mdb. Also, if you use something like
winzip (www.winzip.com), you can usually fit about a 5 meg database on a
single floppy for transfer (I guess most computers have a cd rw anyway!).

Info on front end bloat:
http://www.granite.ab.ca/access/bloatfe.htm
 
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