How many caracters ?

[Raybaudi]

Hi to all friends

do you know how many caracters can be placed in a value of a value list ?

It seems that there is a limitation, but I don't know !

[Brian C]

FMP v6 Value List Limitations are:

The maximum character length of a single value in a value list = 254 characters

The maximum total character length of a value list = 30,000 characters

[Raybaudi]

Hi, Brian

I missed to say that the question was for FM7 !!

[Fenton]

I don't really know. I tried to find out, but I didn't have a file big enough. It's a lot. I believe that mine got all the unique entries of the index of the field (which was every file on my computer). I set ValueListItems into a global field. It was over 17 MB (17,783,311) and it would have gone more if I had more entries (240,000) and more time to waste. It took a while to get it, so I believe speed is the limiting factor here more than text size limit.

[Brian C]

I agee with what Fenton says - speed becomes more of an issue than a maximum size limit.

Here is an update to what I have found as well:

Maximum character length of an entire value list that is stored under "Define Value List":

FMP v6 = 30,000 characters

FMP v7 = 30,000 characters

Maximim character length of a single value in a value list if it is stored under "Define Value List":

FMP v6 = 254 characters

FMP v7 = 30,000 characters

Maximum character length of a single value if each value is stored in a referenced field:

FMP v6 = 254 characters

FMP v7 = It appears to be the 4GB ceiling for a single text field, though I did not push it even close to this since I dont think my machine could handle it without exploding.

As a result, I do not recommend pushing the limits of a single value list item's length in v 7 since it causes the performance to become unbearable as the length of the single value list item increases.

I think the only things I have left out are:

max length of a value list can be if it is derived from related/referenced fields/records

max identifiable character length of each value

I have done some testing of the latter. My original thought was that it would work the same as the max key limit for relationships, and this may well end up being the final recommendation for practical resons, but I have gotten some strange results that I think are related to limitations with fmp parsing data inside of a fields containing CR delimited data. I will see if i can do a bit more testing in any case to nail down some useful numbers.

[Raybaudi]

...so now I know !

Many thanks to all