Tim,

Not so much a problem with file sizes as wanting to understand the underlying mechanisms for how BLOBs are handled, so I can "design once, and forget it".

I had noticed the .BLB files growing fairly quickly on an existing database with one BLOB field and a lot of records, which prompted me to learn more before going forward with a new project (potentially 4 or 5 BLOBs per record) in a table with 100K records.

Having BLOBs take up no space unless data is stored in them, plus automatic re-use, eases my (probably over-cautious) concerns. Also, since the records will be accounting transactions and the most-used BLOB will store the transaction's Memo field contents I should be able to optimize the BLOB storage with a block size of around 100 bytes. (95% of the memos fit within that size, but can be up to 1000 bytes.)

Thanks.

Matthew,

<< Okay, so would using two different blob fields make a difference?  >>

Yes.

<< That is, if I have a field called "SmallBlob" and another "LargeBlob" and
I store the data according to whether it is over a threshold in the
appropriate one, would I get less "fragmentation"? >>

Yes.

Tim Young
Elevate Software
www.elevatesoft.com