[AccessD] Why Change Field Size/was Change Field Size

A review of the thread shows that at the time I raised the objection to 
Drew's practice, the page size record size rextriction was news to a number 
of developers.

There is no reason one can't set the default size to 255 provided the 
developer handles the error that arises when the page file limit is exceeded 
without loss of entered data.  You might be surprised at the developers who 
trusted to luck, were unaware of the limit or had forgotten about the 
limitation.

I handle the error by dumping excess text in a memo field for all records 
that have more than 7 text type data fields that permit 255 characters.



Ciao
Jürgen Welz
Edmonton, Alberta
jwelz at hotmail.com


>From: DWUTKA at marlow.com
>
>That was a heated topic a while back.  I do what you do, set all text 
>fields
>to 255.  In fact, I set the default in Access to 255.
>
>I believe the argument on the other side, was two fold, if I remember
>correctly.  I believe the first issue was allowing Jet/Access to restrict
>fields that shouldn't be larger then x number of characters. (State
>abbreviations, SS#'s, etc.).  The second was to prevent going over the page
>size/max record size.
>
>I still use 255 as my limits.  I do data checks with my interface, and if
>your table structure is properly normalized, you shouldn't run into the max
>record size.
>
>Drew
>
>	-----Original Message-----
>	From:	William Hindman [SMTP:wdhindman at bellsouth.net]
>
>	....the original post raised a question for me
>
>	...my practice has been to default to 255 unless there was a
>specific need
>	to define a smaller one, since with Jet, afaik, you pay no penalty
>for doing
>	so ...and thus avoid having to do most future field size changes.
>
>	...is there any problem with this or am I missing something?
>
>	William