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Visual Foxpro DB size

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rpk2006

Technical User
Apr 24, 2002
225
IN
I want to know what is the maximum database size supported by Visual Foxpro 6 and above.

Are there any mosre security enhancements happened?
 
2 gig per table. If you need larger then break it up into several tables.

Many security enhancements, go to the Microsoft web site to see all of them.
 
As crewchiefpro5 says it's 2 gig per table. If you're comparing with other products remember that a database can consist of many tables and a VFP app can have many databases open at once.

Look for "system capacities" in VFP Help for more details.

Geoff Franklin
 

To be more precise, the limit is 2gigs per file, not just tables.

Mike Gagnon

If you want to get the best response to a question, please check out FAQ184-2483 first.
 
Rpk2006,

As Mike Gagnon pointed out:

To be more precise, the limit is 2gigs per file, not just tables.

That's important, becuause if the table has one or more memo field, the memo text will be a separate file, which might easily be bigger than the table itslef.

__________________________________
Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

My sites:
Visual FoxPro (www.ml-consult.demon.co.uk)
Crystal Reports (www.ml-crystal.com)
 
Mike,

I also want to know, how the VFP table gets loaded into memory. As is said about MS Access, it uses flat file system. So when the table is accessed, whole of the table gets loaded into memory. If the database becomes large enough and system requirements are not upto the mark, the performance of the application becomes sluggish.

Is it same with VFP?
 
Rpk,

No, that's not the same with VFP. Essentially, VFP will only read the records that you request, although it does also use a form of buffering and caching to improve performance.

The amount of free memory will never limit the size of the table.

Mike

__________________________________
Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

My sites:
Visual FoxPro (www.ml-consult.demon.co.uk)
Crystal Reports (www.ml-crystal.com)
 
As is said about MS Access, it uses flat file system.
Fox isn't like Access. An Access database stores all the records of all the tables and indexes in a single huge .Mdb file and startup can be very slow indeed as it loads this file. FoxPro stores its tables and indexes in separate files which makes it faster. When a properly-designed Fox system is asked to retrieve information it will load the index into memory then go to the correct offset within the data file and retrieve the record requested.

Fox does have the capacity to do without the index and load the entire table into memory for a brute-force search. This can be quicker for very small tables but it's the wrong technique for most tables.

By the way - don't worry about the phrase "flat file" - any relational database is a collection of flat files each of which holds information about one aspect of the system.

Geoff Franklin
 
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