Maybe all I

In the "olden days" we actually had to really think about file and data sizes, which is why you ended up with 2 digit years and arcane little codes for data. Now a days nobody give it much thought, which I actually like, but sometimes it can surprise someone how much space data takes up.

In you situation though I am not really surprised. You data is taking up a little more than 1k per record. That is ONLY 1024 bytes or 1024 characters. That is actually not alot of space for a record.

You have to rememeber to that the way Filemaker stores most of it data is actually in BLOB fields. These are Binary Large OBjects. This is what allow you to store up to 64k in fields. Numbers and Date/Time fields of course take up way less. However all of them take up a minimum amount of fixed space, plus the BLOBs will take up a variable amount of space depending upon how much data is actually in the field.

With more traditionally defined databases you have choices like: Boolean, Character, String, Integer, Float, Large Integer, BLOB, Date, Time and maybe a couple of others. Filemaker compresses Boolean, Char, String in a Text type; Integer, Large Integer and Float into a Number type; Date and Time stay thier own types, but it is entirely possible that Filemaker actually stores them as Integers; Container fields are BLOBs.

Do you see FMP or would you like to see FMP move in the direction where data are held in a data file and resources in another? It would sure make version updates easier...I think.

Interesting suggestion... It would certainly lend itself to some different architectures, and may make the management of solution-wide application settings (eg access privileges) more straightforward.

I'm not sure that there are not at least a few advantages which come with the current structure though, which could be reduced if the data and resources were held separately - such as the ability to seamlessly integrate disparate files with front-ends designed for very different purposes and/or people. It might be a case of simplifying some things while complicating others.

It's also possible that the learning curve for novice users would be a little steeper if the architecture were separated in that way?!

Well it is technically possible to seperate data from interface or more properly Structure from Business Logic from Presentation, but it is not a complete seperation and is somewhat goofy in it implemetation. However Filemaker, Inc has alluded over the past couple of years to a completely rewritten version which will allow for multiple tables in a single file.