At 04:58 PM 6/30/98 -0600, Arthur H. Harris wrote:

>Keep in mind (which you may already do) that Access Memo fields
>allow up to about 64,000 characters (I'm familiar to an early
>version, so some facts may have changed).  This has the advantage of
>not setting aside large unused spaces for each record while still
>allowing a number of pages of notes for fields that may require
>extensive material.  The disadvantage is that although Memo fields
>can be searched, they can't be indexed or sorted.
>
>Jeffrey Bilderback wrote:
>>
>> My 2 cents worth on this subject.  I recently took a look at Access and
found
>> that the fields can only hold 255 characters.  That is too short for
many of
>> my entries.  MS Works' database can hold more.  Good luck.
>>
>> Jeffrey Bilderback
>Art Harris

What ever happened to databases like Symantec's Q&A. This database had
variable-length and multi-valued fields. Any field could have multiple
values and could expand up to 64k, plus each value in any field could be
sorted separately and reported separately.  These features, so necessary to
any humanities database that pretends to be more than an inventory, are
hardly cited as requirements any more.  Are all those ACCESS databases out
there just compromising their data? Or are at-home database managers simply
building complexly related architectures to get past the limitations on
multi-values?

A few commercial products still use multi-valued, variable-length PICK
based products, but  this is territory for the brave at heart.

Robert A. Baron
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