[AccessD] On DB Bloat, Bad DB Design, and various

I just did another experiment. I changed the 20 text fields 255 to memo
fields. Call it cheating if you want, but if unlimited text is really
the point then I didn't cheat. As expected, I successfully pasted 255
characters into all 20 fields.

So, to revisit Drew's point, declare the fields that could possibly be
big, big -- but don't declare too many of them. (Personally, I think
that any table containing more than about 50 columns is badly conceived,
but that's another issue -- and I acknowledge that sometimes you have to
go further -- but most of the time it's bad design.)

If you need lots of such fields, use memos rather than text fields.

Arthur

-----Original Message-----
From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
[mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Jim Dettman
Sent: Friday, May 21, 2004 4:48 PM
To: Access Developers discussion and problem solving
Subject: RE: [AccessD] On DB Bloat, Bad DB Design, and various


Arthur,

  You need to fill the fields since text fields are stored variable
length. Also, for JET 4.0 (A2K and up), the page size was increased to
4096 bytes because of Unicode requiring 2 characters.

  The error you get is "Record Too Large"

Jim Dettman
President,
Online Computer Services of WNY, Inc.
(315) 699-3443
jimdettman at earthlink.net