Archiving Records

[tawatana]

In our organisation we have an older database containing about 4000 project records dating from 1997 to 2001. One of the users accesses this database on average about once per fortnight to check details about past projects.

We mainly use the "current" Project database which contains about 1000 projects.

I am considering consolidating all the records into ONE project database.

I feel it would be simpler and neater to have all the records in one database, but is there really any point? Most of the older records are never accessed.

Maybe I should just leave the older records in this "Archived" Project Database.

Has anyone been in a similar situation and/or can give me some advice?

Also, will there be a decrease in performance if I merge all the records, these aren't alot of records by database standards but we are only running peer-to-peer versions of FM Pro 5.5 on 4 machines.

Thanks

Brian

[cjaeger]

I would just do a scripted search. if it returns no match, the user should be presented with a dialog box to continue his search in archived projects database.

As you are using peer-to-peer, performance will degrade when merging all records into one db. This varies depending on your network, cpu and databse structure.

If network performance is a problem now, you may consider installing the archive database locally on each client to get if off the network (no problem since the file is not to be changed), or put it on a fileserver (if it is really used only every 2 weeks).

[veganboyjosh]

before i ever developed in fmp, i was using it at a company for data entry only. and they kept all their old records archived how you said, in a another db. if/when they needed a record from the "old" file, they would simply import the needed record only, so that the entire db didn't grow as much as importing the entire "old" db.