Why size of my .eap file stop growing?

[survex]

When I've started my project my .eap file grew everyday till it reached size of 139.5 MB. Several years past and .eap file still has 139.5 MB.
Why it stopped growing?
Can my old data be overwritten by new one?  :-?

[Geert Bellekens]

.eap file is a database (MS-Access)
Filesize is not directly related to model content.

Geert

[survex]

But is there any size limit for eap database?

[qwerty]

Goto Mickeysoft and see what limitations apply for Access databases. You probably will not hit them (except you're going insane and setup a multi-user environment with logging turned on).

q.

[Eve]

Quite some time ago I did hit the limit for a JET database. I was doing a lot of reverse engineering of large projects of source code, deleting the results and trying again. Because JET doesn't clean up deleted rows automatically I reached the 2GB file size limit. Compacting the database made it useable again.

I can't give a concrete reason why your file would have stopped growing. I would imagine that as you worked JET allocated largish blocks for each table as you added to them. Once you had done a little work in each major table that process stabilized and the size wouldn't need to increase until the already allocated blocks had been filled.

[philchudley]

When you delete items from an eap file, "black holes" are created. Periodically you need to compact the database.

In EA version 12

Select Data Management from the Project main menu
The select Manage .EAP File | Compact .EAP File... from the menu
Select you .EAP file from the dialog and click Open

Your repository is now compacted and you should see a reduction in size

Cheers

Phil

[survex]

Thank you!!!
After action "Compact .EAP File..."  .eap file size changed to 16MB from 139MB!!!

[mpanepinto]

I apologize if I mistake to post here my question, but I think the ask is pertinent with this thread:
Is it possible that "black holes" are created also in centralized databases like Oracle or MySQL and not only in eap file?
If the answer is "Yes", how to reduce and compact the db?

Thanks.

Marco

[qwerty]

These areas come to mind that can bloat you DB:
- audit
- lots of snapshots
- adding tons of binaries (like Word documents)

Anyhow, none will in any way be able to reach limits of even simple RDBMS. And since Alice and Bob each have a Terabyte space in their laptop - does size matter?

q.