acatalog mdb size issue

[mccanm]

Hi

We have been monitoring the size of acatalog.mdb on our main production machine, because the machine had begun to slow down.

The acatalog.mdb file was at 220mb so we purged historic orders and compacted databases. This brought the size down to a more reasonable 123mb and actinic speeded back up. However one day later and the file seems to have grown back up to 250mb with the result that actinic is now running slow again. We haven't done any significant work, just added a handful of new products (about 10) and processed about 50 orders. (For info we have about 4000 products in the catalog and we use components and duplicates a fair amount).

We never used to see this level of volatility in the database sizes. Does anyone have any ideas.

Mark
www.GetGeared.co.uk

[pinbrook]

I would suggest regularly compacting the database ie daily or weekly

[pnagames]

Hi Mark

from what i know when you compact the database is doind kind of zipping.

however when you start adding new products it will kind of unzip the database to add the new products.

the size actually sound reasonable to me considering the amount of products you have in there.

do you actually have all 4000 products live?

Jo beat me to a reply, but the suggestion made is the best solution.

[mccanm]

Hi

We have about 3000 products actually live on site and we use customvars fairly intensively as well as duplicates.

We can compact the database daily but we have never had the need to in the past, hence the concern that we now seem to have to do daily housekeeping on the database.

I am just hoping this is not a symptom of some larger issue that is about to hit us.

[pnagames]

i have had similar experiences with Access databases in the past in my job.

i even had a db of a similar size droping below 100mb after compact.

i never had a problem with them.

they took some time when they were processing but that was about it.

[Jan]

from what i know when you compact the database is doind kind of zipping.

What actually happens is that Access leaves worker tables around, so if you have large tables and are regularly running queries (which Actinic does) Access leaves the tables created to run the queries in place until the space is needed, access also leaves the space left over by deleting records in place, so if you are moving sections around a lot, then there will be a lot of deleted rows left in place.

Compacting it deletes these temporary tables, and allows the space left over from deleting rows to be reused and so makes the database size much smaller - bet you always wanted to know that.

This is an interesting article from Microsoft on compact and repair :

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/283849

Regards,