Large Database or Several Smaller DBs?

[J-Mac]

Which is more effective - keeping a lot of data in one URD, or creating several separate URD's?

I have a URD that I use for reference articles and I have several different topics in there as folders. It isn't terribly large yet; just about 100 MB. I am curious as to what user experience has shown - is it OK to just keep growing this database and continue adding folders to it? Or is it better to break this into a few URD's based on general categories.

at what size URD does URp begin to experience speed issues in opening, searching, etc. due to size and sheer volume of data?

Thank you.

Jim

[Jon Polish]

The great advantage to having a single database is the ability to search. Since UR cannot search multiple databases in one go, this should be your primary consideration.

I have two databases. One is for my email archive, the other is for everything else. I found that when a folder has thousands of items, it can slow the loading of the database if the folder is left open when the database is last used. Opening the folder will also take some time. I work around this by creating sub-folders and placing hundreds of items in each one. For example, my 2007 email archive has almost 90,000 emails (yes, this is work related - no spam, junk, etc.). The folder took foreevr to open, so it is now broken down by month. Much faster. Searching speed for this database is slower, but not unreasonable. I also use a dedicated program, Mailbag Assistant, for this purpose too, but each has its strengths.

By the way, the size of the email database is 8.5GB; my other database is a more reasonable 673MB.

I wrote this quickly - does this help?

Jon

[ashwken]

I'm not sure what the practical upper limits are, I've got one db that's currently at 450mb and performance is not noticeably different than when it was smaller. I'm sure that there are others with much larger db that can weigh-in on this.

The question of splitting dbs has come up before with opinions falling on both sides of the fence.

In the particular example you used, an article reference db, it would probably be best to keep it entact and differentiate catagories (topics or interests) thru the Attributes.

An interesting example of all-in-one or seperate-by-topic would be the case of tracking Books, Movies, and Music. At first glance these would seem to call for different dbs because the Attributes for each would be different, but this can be handled all within one db thru the use of various Forms and Default Child Template assignment.

The all-in-one approach would allow you to "see" the full scope of an individuals contribution across a range of Media (Entertainment).

This is always an interesting topic, design approaches.

[J-Mac]

Thanks for the quick replies!

@Jon: Wow! 90,000 email messages? Got me beat by a long shot. That's a lot of mail, Jon! BTW, I have been using Mailbag Assistant for a few years now. Great program.

@Ken: Sounds like I have a long, long way to go before even having to think about splitting anything out of my database. Mine is much smaller currently.

At least now I have an idea what size database others are running without a problem.

Thank you both.

Jim