I'm somewhat new at using filemaker. I've written a feature-rich patient, charting database for an medical practice that has a sizable number of scripts(about 40) and fields(340). I was amazed to learn of the file size of 9 megs without any records. This seems large to me--especially since there needs to be a charting database file for each patient(hundreds of files will be created). This is a workable starting file size, but it would be nice if the file size was smaller. Is it normal for a file with no records to be 9 megs? Could something be wrong with my database file? (It works great.)

Thanks for any help.

-Todd

Do you have any pictures in your database?

Picture can make your db to grow very rapidly, I had just one JPG file imported in one database and it went form 31KB to 5,125KB with only this small picture (original size 41KB)

Then I change to GIF and the db was still a small file, so check to see if you have any pictures.

Three hundred fields and 40 scripts is not very big. I have a file that has 800+ fields and 400+ scripts. Layouts will add to file size, as will container fields. Try the 'Save A Copy' command on the file menu and see if it gets smaller.

Is there a specific need to make a seperate file for each patient?

What I bet is happening is that the graphics and icons and other such stuff needed for your charting purposes is a certain size. If you have one of these systems for each patient you will quickly run into hundreds of GBs for them.

What you could do is to move the patient specific information to a seperate DB, which can then be related back to this charting DB.