Question Regarding Access 2007 Attachments Field Type

[CrazyAccessProgrammer]

Access 2007, Fully Patched as of 02/07/2009:

One of the reasons I never used Embedded OLE field types in versions of
access prior to Access 2007 was that the embedded objects would quickly grow
the size of your access database... sometimes to the point where you can't
enter any more data.

Does the attachment field type of Access 2007 have this same problem? From
what I understand so far, Attachment field types embed a copy of the object
into your database (no option to link to an object from what I can see so
far).

I have a database application I am building that will include multiple
hi-res photographs with each record of the primary table. Normally I'd make a
custom form that would link these photographs to the record. But I'm curious
about using the new Access 2007 attachment feature as long as it doesnt grow
my database by leaps and bounds.

 

[Allen Browne]

When you embed a file in your database, Access 2007 uses the space taken by
the JPG, whereas previous versions used the uncompressed space (the amount
that would have been taken if the file had been a BMP rather than a JPG. So
the file space to store one photo in A2007 is multiple times less than the
space taken in previous versions.

This assumes you configured A2007 to do so under:
Office Button | Access Options | Current Database | Picture Property
Naturally, previous versions of Access can't display in the database the
info if you do this.

But your question relates to storing hi-res photos in an Access database. My
advice would be, Don't do that. A typical hi-res RAW photo will be 4-8MB
today, and over 20MB tomorrow (e.g. using a Canon 50D.) My wife is a graphic
designer, so we shot 7000 frames on our last trip. 7000 @ 20MB each would be
140GB of storage -- for one trip! An Access database has a 2GB limit. This
is not going to work in any version.

So, my suggestion would be to use a Text field to store the file name rather
than embed the data in an Attachment field.

Another unemphasised feature of A2007 is that the Image control has a
Control Source for the first time. This makes it really easy to display
photos: you just set the Control Source of an Image control to the name of
the Text field than contains the path, and Access shows the image. This even
works in Continuous Forms, so it's even better than using an Attachment
field. And as a bonus, this has none of the problems/limitations associated
using multi-valued fields like the Attachment.

--
Allen Browne - Microsoft MVP. Perth, Western Australia

Reply to group, rather than allenbrowne at mvps dot org.

"CrazyAccessProgrammer" <[email protected]>
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[CrazyAccessProgrammer]

Thank you for all the insight. I think I'll do what you suggested.

 

[Tammy]

Hi! Tried the image control, and it's great. Now, for the dumb question - if
you have a lot of images you'd like to have handy in Access, does this mean
you'd have to create a text field for each image (to hold the location path),
if some records require more than one image? That is one nice thing about
using the attachment field - being able to store multiple files and view them
only when needed. Just curious if I missed something about the image control.
Thanks so much!