what is the max size for an ACCESS database

[pitou]

Hello

Would you excuse me for my bad english ( I m French).
I m going as clear as possible in my question.
I would like to know, practically, and in a professional point of view , what is really the maximum size for an access database ?

By the same way, i would like to know how many records can we really store in one table and how many users can use at the same time a database.

I do not believe Microsoft when they say for instance than we can rely on access 2000 to create a 2 giga database, which is, i think, theorical but not practical (poor SQL queries!);

If you have life experiences about those topics, thanks to share them with me

Best regards from France

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Ah, Pitou! Je suis tres hereux de faire votre connaisance.

(That exhausts my practical French. But then, I'm from Cajun-land, not Europe, so I don't REALLY speak French anyway. You could probably tell that from how badly I fractured that little snippet of your language, couldn't you?)

To find out the maximum size of an Access database, you can look in the Help files.

If you are on Access 97 or earlier, look up keyword LIMITS in the Help files. You will see help links that lead to an enumeration of the programmed limits.

If you are on Access 2000 or later, look up the keyword SPECIFICATIONS in the Help files. You will see more help links that will lead to more detailed enumerations of the programmed limits. I tend to believe that these limits are quite real.

As to the size of a database, there are ways to work around the 2 Gb limit, usually involving the process of linking to externally defined tables. Front-end and back-end database splits also have some effectiveness. However, the recordset limits and SQL string size limits are much more difficult factors to evade. Also, the size of a single table will be difficult to evade. (UNION queries between two different but similar tables might be one way to exceed size limits on a single table, but I've never had THAT much data to actually try it.)

In general, I have found that Access will start to show signs of overload once you start processing records numbering in the hundreds of thousands - for example in a graph based on a query that selects small subsets of a much larger data set. I have reason to do that when filing monthly performance reports for one of the time-sharing computer systems I manage. Building the usage graphs can be quite slow.

As to the number of simultaneous users, it matters more what those users are doing. The more they have open at once, the more likely they are to interfere with each other, particularly if any of them have write privileges to whatever they have open. You can do only so much with the lock management properties before Access complains. (Shortly to be followed by your users complaining as well.)

For what it does, Access is great! But it DOES have its limits.

 

[pitou]

your answer

hello doc_man


Congratulation, your first french sentence was perfect, all but the word "hereux" which is written "heureux". Phonetically, it could have been perfectly understandable !
I think that the Cajun land was a part of the former Louisiana, sold by Napoleon at the beginning of the XIX TH century ?

Anyway, thanks for your reply. I will profit your pieces of advice by searching in the files you mentionned.

You are right to specify that ACCESS DOES have its limit. I wanted
to have those informations because I heard so many different things that I was a bit lost.

For instance, A Switz, a man responsible, in a company, of all the access applications, told me that he usually have 70 users at the same time and that the applications work in a suitable way.
I do not criticize his point of view but............

As for me, I made different experiments and I shoul say that I will not exceed 150000, 200000 records in one table.

I think all those things are quite important, and we can read on other E-sites people bearing witness that they "got stuck in the spider web" because of a too huge database.

Merci encore et à bientôt

Pitou

 

[ColinEssex]

Bonjour! Votre anglais est très bon, là n'est aucun appologise du besoin. Je ne parle pas français mais utilise le traducteur sur l'Internet Voila!!

 

[Alexandre]

Je ne parle pas français mais utilise le traducteur sur l'Internet Voila!!

Ouais, hé ben ça se sent! (Try to translate this one )

Nice try, Colin but this pretty well proves -if need be- that automatic translation technologies are not mature yet, and good old learning methods still needed for a while

 

[ColinEssex]

Hi Alex

I totally agree with you.
They do have their uses though and perhaps in time they will improve.

I'm struggling with Spanish but am quite happy to make a fool of myself in Spain trying to speak it, I know the Spanish think more of you for trying rather than expecting them to speak English. I think its nice to try to learn another language.

Col

 

[Alexandre]

Hi Colin,

I do agree with you and know from first-hand experience (since my field of work lead me to try to learn a few langages , with more or less success ) how important it is to try to learn and actually do mistakes.
Not only does it not make you look like a fool in the eyes of people you are talking with but I found that they do are sensitive to efforts demonstrated and offer you in return a respect and quality of human and professional relationships that you could hardly pretend to otherwise.

Sometimes I wonder what will become of the quality of human relationships in these times of technological escalation and pursuit of easiness

 

[pitou]

langues et langages

Bonjour Colin et Alexandre

Votre discussion est intéressante. yes obviously automatic translation technologies will have to improve. When I tried last time to translate an E-site about jazz, the name of a famous singer "fats waller" was translated into "graisses Waller" which is absolutely funny but not accurate at all !!!!!!!!

cordialement

 

[Cosmos75]

So, I'm a bit of a geek.... sue me!

Alexandre,

Je ne parle pas français mais utilise le traducteur sur l'Internet Voila!!

I understand french utilizing translater from the internet" Viola!

or is it

I don't understand french without utilizing translater from the internet Viola!

of tHe few French phrases I know is

Je ne compre pah francais. (I don't understand french)

Je compre fraicais. (I understand french)

Please forgive my spelling on the phrases, I know it is pretty bad!

It's my understanding that

... ne ... pah part of first phrase is akin to

I can't get no satisfaction.

This has been used to explain how people across culture come up with similiar grammar rules for language. Chomsky and Steven Pinker use this to say that language is inherent is the human brain.

Showing my geeky-ness here....

 

[Cosmos75]

internet translater?

Where can I find an internet translater?

 

[Alexandre]

If i remember well Chomsky goes even further, and suggests that there would be an actual kind of 'gramatical center' organ common to humans and providing them with similar fundamental gramatical principles and gramatical construction/interpretation abilities. ie langage would not be only cultural but partially genetical!

As to your question, the phrase I quoted from Colin was gramatically correct and I referred to it for its meaning, not its correctness. The other one was not, and not even really understandable if isolated from its context (and pretty funny to read, hence my remark to Colin):

Votre anglais est très bon, là n'est aucun appologise du besoin.
Literal translation:
Your English is very good, there is none [not a French word ] of the necessity.


Je ne parle pas français mais utilise le traducteur sur l'Internet Voila!!
Translates:
I do not speak French but use [the] translater [on the] Internet
(slight mistakes reproduced between brackets)


Back to your gramatical point, I am not really sure that:
I can't get no satisfaction.
is a correct construction in English? In French it is not. Our logics are that a double negation is equivalent to an affirmation (similarily to algebra -3 x -3 = +9)
So it literally would mean for us:
It is impossible for me not to get satisfied.


Regarding:
Je ne comprend pas le français
This construction is correct, since it is not a double negation.
Ne...pas
is one only negation, written in two words

Such gramatical logics have no equivalent that I know of in English?
Hence Hastings and Waterloo, De Gaulle and Tatcher, tea and wine and the famous many grounds of mutual understanding between Frenchies and their beloved neighbours, I presume...

BTW, did you know that words like beef and mutton are inherited from the French boeuf and mouton= part of Normand's ordinary meals after the annexation (provocation intended) of England, while ox and sheep come from Saxon farmers' ordinary breeding duties at the same period?
[I would be very deceived if I got no reaction to this one ]


PS:

Where can I find an internet translater?

Give a try to this link
Automatic translation


That was all for today's cultural recreation

 

[ColinEssex]

Poor old Pitou !!!

He only wanted to know the max size for a Db !!

Col

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Pitou, you are quite correct. Napoleon sold the Louisiana Territory (essentially, all lands drained by the Mississippi River) to the fledgling United States in 1803 for about 3,000,000 dollars. I don't want to think about what that amount would be if adjusted for inflation over 200 years. Anyway, Napoleon needed the money to finance a war. He wasn't interested in such a distant territory. We needed the land to support westward migration of our people. Though the truth is, we didn't really want that much. But Thomas Jefferson knew a bargain when he saw it. A mutually acceptable deal was struck and the Lousiana Territory became the property of the United States. Louisiana became a state in 1812, was part of the Confederacy during the American Civil War (also known locally as the War of Northern Aggression, and that will SURELY get a rise out of someone...)

The Cajun territory is actually the home of folks who left Arcadia, Nova Scotia, Canada after the UK took over Canada from France. As told by the late Justin Wilson, a Cajun humorist, the Arcadian people wouldn't swear allegiance TO the King of England, they would only swear AT him. So they sailed south around the tip of the Florida peninsula and nestled in the marsh country to the southwest of the current location of New Orleans.

That area has undergone a metamorphosis of cultures, becoming a true melting pot of the people who have settled there, including Spanish, French, English, Dutch, German, and Native American (Choctaw tribe) cultures. The name "Cajun" is itself the result of a linguistic drift resulting from different accents pronouncing "Arcadian" incorrectly. It went to "Arcadjian" and then to "Cadjian" and then to "Cajun" over a couple of hundred years.

Some other linguistic differences:

In English, "I do not know" becomes French "Je ne c'est pas" but Cajun "Pas ca ne"

In English, "Potato" becomes French "Pomme de Terre" but Cajun "Potat" (both T's pronounced hard and elision does not occur for T in Cajun like it would in French.)

My wife is Cajun, from the area of Thibadaux, LA. If you can't find it on any maps, look for Houma, LA or Lafayette, LA. It is close to there. Her REAL home is Chac Bay, but don't bother to look for that on a map. You won't find it unless you are a real map freak.

By the way, if you DO happen to look at a map of south Louisiana and some of the names look French but don't make sense, it is because they are French spellings of Choctaw words. Because, of course, most Native American languanges weren't written until the French got here. As a result, we get street names like Tchopitoulas (the French spelling of the name of an old Choctaw tribal chief.)

See what you get when you make a side comment in a post?

 

[pitou]

database ms Access at Lafourche et Terrebonne

hello Doc_man

Happy to read you once again.

All what you mentionned is true and the Englishmen did the deportation of the former Cajun people.
I think it is a part of history and we have to forget it, as we have to forget that the fact to sell Louisiana was a way to get money to wage war mostly against ..............England.
Once, Hobbes The english philososopher said "men is a wolf for men".........

All your explanation about the origins of Cajun words were quite interesting It reminds me of the evolution of the French from Quebec. In fact the Acadian were the brothers of the people of Quebec.
The French from Quebec is beginning slightly to drift apart from the French of France, like the US English compared with the English of UK, (thru/throught critter/creature etc….).. I hope not to be wrong.

For instance In Quebec, to say to “shop at” they say “magasiner “(magasin = a shop”)” rather than “aller faire les courses” (to run errands).

I already saw a map of Louisiana and Florida; saying to myself that it may be wonderful to live in one of the US Sun belt. What stroke me was the name Bâton Rouge (red stick, the name of an Indian chief ???). Also New Orleans comes from the town Orléans which is 150 KM away from Paris.

As I love jazz (above all Swing and new Orleans style, not bebop), one of my dream should be to walk in the streets of N.O in order to hear at the street bands (I would like to go in Harlem too to see the Savoy Ballroom). I read once a book that depicted the life of this town, when Louis Armstrong was still young. Street bands were everywhere, even for burials. Crowd walked slowly and sadly to bring the dead at the graveyard and when things were done, they all returned happily with the orchestra playing , as if nothing had happened.!!

Perheaps everything has changed, but I should not be so sure.
You are perfectly true to say that N.O is a mixation of cultures , and it is not surprising that jazz was born here. I think, Several factors explained that.
You mentioned in your last post your civil war. In fact, life between black and white people was close. After the war and the emancipation of the black people, things got topsy turvy. But in New Orleans the contact between the two folks has remained “somewhat” different, mainly because of the Spanish and French elements, much closer, and in-between, the free Creole who knew how to read the music and to arrange the musical stuff .

All that was a good basis for the creation of the kind of music that, I think millions of people throughout the world, love, even in Afghanistan…….


Greetings

Pitou

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Pitou

You would perhaps be somewhat disappointed in New Orleans these days. The description of street bands and such was true when I was in college back in the 1960's and early 1970's, but the French Quarter (or Vieux Carre') has undergone at least two full metamorphoses - and is starting a third.

The Vieux Carre' of my college days was still oriented towards the guiltier pleasures. Lots of bars, a few shops that - how do I say it delicately? - sold adult intimate toys and picture magazines. But then the city council decided to clean it up a bit and head towards a more tourist-oriented economy for that district. The art shops and antique shops stayed, but many other places became tourist traps selling T-shirts (made in Taiwan) and curios (made in Beijing.) Very few of the souvenirs were locally made.

The criminal element saw the "new" Vieux Carre' as a field ripe for the harvest, so pick-pockets, drug dealers, and prostitution flared up, preying on tourists. That was part of the bad name that our fair city got in the 1980's. Sadly, it was earned.

Well, THAT had to be cleaned out. The current mayor is waging a huge cleanup campaign to make the area more "family friendly" - but that has the effect of chasing out folks who used to operate without city permits. Which includes many of the mimes, street musicians, and street dancers.

As to the music, the younger generation is diverging from the styles of the great jazzmen of the 1940's through the 1980's. You can still find a few jazz havens, but more modern music has taken over many Vieux Carre' establishments. Now it would be far easier to find Cajun music than Jazz, I would say.

I used to play music in a Bourbon Street band myself. (I play trumpet and electronic organ.) We had a small club gig (musical slang for a short-term job, sometimes as short as a single night) that turned into about a five-year stay. So I had the chance to meet some of the big names while working there. But most of them are either dead or retired now.

Living in New Orleans "sun belt" is interesting if you like your summers really hot and humid. We figure that 95 by 95 is about normal for the months of July and August (and most of September). Those numbers are degrees Fahrenheit and percent humidity. If ever you hear someone speaking of heat and that person adds "but it was a DRY heat," ... that person WASN'T talking about New Orleans. Trust me.

Yes, Louisiana's fortune in 1803 was someone else's misfortune. I agree that some of the events of the past must be forgiven, but we should never forget. It is part of our heritage, good OR bad, and it has a lot to do with our family. Besides, we have a famous quote here: Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.

Knowing that history led to better appreciation during a Canadian vacation I took with my wife a few years ago. It was fun driving around in east-central Canada. The names and house styles made me feel at home. Despite separation of cultures for a couple of hundreds of years, strong similarities remained - particularly in the farm country - between Quebec Province and the Lafayette area of Louisiana. It helped me to understand a bit more of that part of my wife's family roots. And of course, she was enthralled at seeing it, too.

As to Baton Rouge, which DOES mean Red Stick, they didn't tell you the rest of the derivation (probably). The REAL name comes from Istrouma, which translates to .... Red Stick. One of the larger secondary schools in Baton Rouge is Istrouma High School, so the real name lives on. The original "Red Stick" was a marker on the banks of the Mississippi River where the various representatives of the Choctaw tribal councils would come for the gathering of the Choctaw nation. That site has now become the state capital of Louisiana.

 

[ColinEssex]

Hi

Is the Choctaw you mentioned the same as the "Choctaw Ridge" as mentioned in the 'Ode to Billy Joe' song which was sung by Bobby Gentry?

Col

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Hi, Colin

In answer to your question, I have no way of knowing for sure, but it is quite possible.

The Choctaw tribe spread to the east of the Mississippi River as well as to the west. You will find Choctaw names in the state of Mississippi as well as in Louisiana. I'm not really sure how far north they made it, because somewhere away from the coast, the Cherokee nation had some claim. (My own ancestry includes just a smidgen of Cherokee from northern Alabama.)

If I recall correctly, Bobbie Gentry was originally from rural Mississippi. So there could well have been a landmark named "Choctaw Ridge" that she would have remembered in her song. It would have been a local landmark, though, and applied by the white settlers, not the Choctaw tribe. Their name for it would not have been "Choctaw" anything, because their names were things of nature, like animals and birds.

For instance, on good Louisiana maps you will see such names as "Bogue Chitto" and "Bogue Falaya" - black squirrel and black stream, respectively.

On the other hand, the "Tallahatchi Bridge" from which Billie Joe jumps could be a Choctaw name. Consider Tallahassee Florida, the Tallapoosa River in Alabama, and the Talladega Speedway in Alabama. "Talla" is a common prefix for names in the western gulf coast, though I am not sure whether it is Choctaw or Seminole in origin.

 

[ColinEssex]

Hi Doc

Thanks for that, I think its amazing when you delve into the history of places. I appreciate the time you've spent explaining all this.

Col