On Wed, 22 Sep 2004 06:19:50 GMT, "deko"
<ww************ *************** ****@nospam.com > wrote:
Is it best practice to set Unicode Compression to "No" for memo fields in a
table? What about text fields?
According to the VB help entry:
"Data in a Memo field is not compressed unless it requires 4,096 bytes or
less of storage space after compression. As a result, the contents of a Memo
field might be compressed in one record, but might not be compressed in
another record."
So if the vast majority of memo fields are less than 4096 bytes, why bother?
You seem to have it backwards. If only fields with less than 4096 bytes are
compressed, and most of your fields are less than 4096, then most of your data
will ge the benefit of compression.
Is it better to avoid compression? My main concern is data integrity - I'm
willing to take a performance hit to get rid of compression if I don't need
it.
Since fields are compressed on an individual basis, corruption can't affect
more than one field. My guess (and it's only a guess) is that compression
gives you a slightly larger chance of losing all or part of the data in one
field as opposed to just one or 2 characters, but adds no greater risk than
that.
I have yet to have a problem where the compression would have made a
difference one way or other. If I've lost anything at all on a corruption,
it's been 1 or 2 entire records (or a whole database) not all or part of a
field.
Personally, I recommend that you go ahead and use Unicode compression.
