Deleting a field takes a long time

[Tom Kennedy]

As my database has grown in size so has the time it takes to delete a field in a table. Everything else seems to work fairly quickly.

Any ideas?

[Lee Smith]

Have you saved a copy compressed?

what is the Field, calculation, container, text, number, etc.?

Is there a relationship involved?

Does the field contain data?

Lee

Edited December 10, 2008 by Guest
forgot the data part

[Tom Kennedy]

If I create a field (no data, no calcs, etc.) and then try to delete it - it takes a long time.

[Lee Smith]

so, have you tried saving a compressed copy and seeing if this is still a problem?

How many records are in this file?

[Tom Kennedy]

I can create a field in a table with 1 record. The delete can take more than 2 minutes.

Compressed - this creates a zip file - right?

[Lee Smith]

http://www.filemaker.com/help/21-Maintaining4.html

[Tom Kennedy]

Thanks!

This seemed to help quite a bit - down to 40 sec.

Question - will this technique make everything faster?

[Lee Smith]

Have you notice any other problems with the file.

This might be a sign of corruption. There used to be an Article by [color:red]gdurniak Here, but it doesn't seem to work anymore. Read this information found in the Help File Link, and review the post in the Damage and Corrupt Topic Link

HTH

Lee

[bruceR]

As my database has grown in size so has the time it takes to delete a field in a table. Everything else seems to work fairly quickly.

Any ideas?

One of the very strange things that has been found to be related to slow field deletes: all your variable names must be lower case. Not $SomeVariable and not $someVariable but $somevariable.

Sounds crazy but the problem has been repeatedly tested and lower case fixes it.

Another thing I will sometimes do is NOT delete the field but just turn it into a global, zDeleted01, etc. This can also help if you have import scripts or if you want to compare file versions. You just look at the fields in creation order and you can see where the changes occurred.

Edited December 10, 2008 by Guest