Storage Question

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Hi,

I need to find out how much space my database records would take if a
table were to be filled up with 62000 records. Pardon my ignorance,
are the records stored in the *.mdb file itself? I tried to insert
about 600 records into a table and tested on the file size of the mdb
before and after insertion, but there do not seem to have any effect
on the mdb file size at all.

Thanks.

Regards
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Where the data's stored depends on the database. Some are "front-ends" that
only contain the queries, forms, reports, macros and modules and are linked
to a "back-end" that contains the tables. Linked tables have a little arrow
to the left of the table icon when you look at the list of tables. To find
out where the linked table is located, try opening the linked table in
Design mode (it'll give you a warning message, but just click on Yes to
ignore it), then look at the Properties for the table (View | Properties
from the tool bar). The Description will contain the path to the database
where the actual data is stored.

If that's not the case (in other words, you're not using linked tables),
then yes, the data is stored in the MDB itself. How much room it takes isn't
a simple calculation: for example, text fields only take as much room as is
required, regardless of how large they've been declared.
 
Hi,

I need to find out how much space my database records would take if a
table were to be filled up with 62000 records. Pardon my ignorance,
are the records stored in the *.mdb file itself? I tried to insert
about 600 records into a table and tested on the file size of the mdb
before and after insertion, but there do not seem to have any effect
on the mdb file size at all.
Click to expand...

In addition to Douglas' comments, note that a .mdb file will generally
grow in 32KByte chunks: if there's room in the current block of disk,
you can add quite a few records without changing the size of the file,
then adding a tiny bit of data will cause a startling 32K jump in
size. Also, deleting records does NOT cause the database to shrink;
you must use Tools... Database Utilities... Compact and Repair
database on a regular basis to keep the size under control.

As a side note, Access' internal storage format for data is
proprietary and not publicly documented. Some folks have figured a lot
of it out but Microsoft isn't forthcoming about the details.

John W. Vinson [Access MVP]
 
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