Issue with database size

[pkost]

Hello all,

I’m interning on a database project that has become a lot more complicated
than planned. The goal is to store photos of the project I’m working for
and be able to use a form to call up all the photopoints over the past 4
years at the different locations. I’m having problems getting around access’s
2 gig limit. Which I thought I solved by creating lots of separate databases
and linking them together but now I can’t figure out how to write a query in
which I don’t pull in all the photos or is that even possible. Is there
anyway I can indirectly reference them and still get the pictures to show up
in the forms? I’d appreciate any help. Thanks

 

[Douglas J. Steele]

Don't store the photos in the database. Store them as files externally, and
only store the full path to each file in the database.

Access MVP Larry Linson has posted the following in the past:
The sample imaging databases at http://accdevel.tripod.com illustrate three
approaches to handling images in Access, and the download includes an
article discussing considerations in choosing an approach. Two of the
approaches do not use OLE Objects and, thus, avoid the database bloat, and
some other problems, associated with images in OLE Objects.

If you are printing the images in reports, to avoid memory leakage, you
should also see MVP Stephen Lebans' http://www.lebans.com/printfailures.htm.
PrintFailure.zip is an Access97 MDB containing a report that fails during
the Access formatting process prior to being spooled to the Printer Driver.
This MDB also contains code showing how to convert the contents of the Image
control to a Bitmap file prior to printing. This helps alleviate the "Out of
Memory" error that can popup when printing image intensive reports.

 

[pkost]

Thanks alot. My boss was really hoping to keep the images embedded in access
but it seems like that might not be the best solution.

 

[Jeff Boyce]

A couple alternatives ...

(First, I'm with Douglas, don't store image files in Access... but!)

The newest Access ('07) supposedly does a better job of handling image files
(i.e., less "bloat").

Or, if you can connect to a SQL-Server database, you could store the images
in SQL-Server. It will take a bit of coding to get them in and out... I've
used this approach for a "Contracts" database, to help reduce the need for
storing paper documents.

The alternative is to put the image files in a known location
(folder/directory/path), with a known naming convention, then store the
location/path/filename in your database.

Regards

Jeff Boyce
Microsoft Office/Access MVP

 

[John Vinson]

Thanks alot. My boss was really hoping to keep the images embedded in access
but it seems like that might not be the best solution.

If you're planning to upgrade to Access2007 ( which I will confess
that I have NOT done ), I understand that the new release fixes most
of the excessive bloat problems with images.

John W. Vinson[MVP]

 

[John Nurick]

Embedding is definitely not the best solution because there's a great
deal of overhead involved in packaging the images into OLE objects.

You can avoid some of that by not embedding the images in an OLE field,
but instead storing the *contents* of the image files in the field,
using AppendChunk() and GetChunk() to store and retrieve the data. This
keeps the image data in the mdb file, but makes it more complicated to
do anything with it.

 

[jimrockford]

this sounds like something i am trying to do. i am looking to creat a
database with pics but the images will be small jpgs. maybe 5k each. is
there a template i can use and modify the fields in? i'm very very green in
access, but have lots of books to help me set it up i hope. i can use all
the help i can get gary running access2003

 

[Jeff Boyce]

Consider looking at the templates Microsoft offers. Also try Google on the
topic.

Regards

Jeff Boyce
Microsoft Office/Access MVP