[AccessD] Should I use Attachments?

Darrell Burns dhb at flsi.com
Sun May 15 10:27:10 CDT 2011


Re: "I'm not sure what you mean by not backward-compatible"
	Meaning exactly what you said.
Re: "... the data is compressed"
	Do you know how it's compressed? More than a Zip?
Re: "...bloating DB's is a thing of the past"
	Boy, it hasn't been a thing of the past in my experience. Maybe this
is grist for another mill, but I am constantly contending with bloat from
reusing tables (in A2007); ie; I have fixed tables bound to subforms that
get flushed and refilled each time a tab is clicked. Although no more than a
few records each, I can watch the file size increase a few kb as I click
back and forth. I still have to rely on Compact/Repair to control the bloat.

-DB 

-----Original Message-----
From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
[mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Jim Dettman
Sent: Sunday, May 15, 2011 4:26 AM
To: 'Access Developers discussion and problem solving'
Subject: Re: [AccessD] Should I use Attachments?


 I'm not sure what you mean by "not backward-compatible".  It's a new
feature and did not exist in prior versions, so yes, it would not be
available in JET (it's an ACE only feature).

 As far as performance, I have not heard anything in that regard.  It's not
the same animal as an OLE field; there is no OLE wrapper around the object.
And the data is compressed to boot.  So bloating DB's is a thing of the
past.

 However because of that, you just can't pull the raw data out and move it
or use it in some other way.  Also, you still must contend with the ACE DB
limit of 2GB.

 Given all that, I would still do it the traditional way as Rocky said;
store a path in the DB and keep everything outside of the DB.

Jim. 

-----Original Message-----
From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
[mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Darrell Burns
Sent: Saturday, May 14, 2011 08:33 PM
To: 'Access Developers discussion and problem solving'
Subject: [AccessD] Should I use Attachments?

New subject: my client wants to link PDF documents to records in an Asset
table in an A2007 app. The attachment data type is perfect for what I want
to do, but I've heard bad things about it. I know one caveat is that it's
not backward-compatible. I've also heard that it's a performance drag. (I
tried using OLE fields in A2000 a few years ago and quickly abandoned that
approach). The Asset table would range from a few hundred to a couple
thousand records per client. I'll be deploying the app as a runtime.

I'd be interested in hearing the pros & cons of attachments. 

Thanx,
DB

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