Picture size in Database

[Anil]

Hi Everyone,

When i insert a picture (103 kb JPEG image) in the menu_main form, th
size of the datadase increases by 30 MB. What is the reason that th
size increases by such a large amount. Is there any way i can reduc
the size to a small amount? I would like to keep the picture.


thanks in advanc

 

[Exponent]

This is due to the use of OLE Embedding, which can cause an uncompressed copy of the image (and sometimes
2) to be stored in the field. As well as the huge storage overhead (and corresponding performance hit)
there are other possible drawbacks to this approach, such as system configuration and interoperability
issues.

If you want the image actually stored in the table then the image can be stored as raw-binary (BLOB) data,
which has a negligible overhead. Otherwise you can work entirely with external image files.

More information on this topic is available here:

http://www.ammara.com/articles/imagesaccess.html

 

[Larry Linson]

"Anil" wrote

When i insert a picture (103 kb JPEG
image) in the menu_main form, the
size of the datadase increases by 30 MB.
What is the reason that the size increases
by such a large amount. Is there any way
i can reduce the size to a small amount?
I would like to keep the picture.

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.

Larry Linson
Microsoft Access MVP

 

[John Vinson]

Hi Everyone,

When i insert a picture (103 kb JPEG image) in the menu_main form, the
size of the datadase increases by 30 MB. What is the reason that the
size increases by such a large amount. Is there any way i can reduce
the size to a small amount? I would like to keep the picture.

This is a common problem: Access (or to be precise JET) is horribly
inefficient at handling image data. There are explanations and links
to workarounds here:

http://www.mvps.org/access/forms/frm0030.htm