Packing Access applications for customers, I ran into something curious. Access 97 databases (front end), if compacted, cannot be compressed more than that. WinZip does pack them, but the ratio is 0%. This seems logical to me. Now I have an A2000 database – and this one gets compressed with a ratio >70%, again after compacting in Access. I then converted a DB from A97 to A2000. The compression ratio is still 0% – but if I’m creating a new DB in A2000 and import everything to the last character, it will be compressed again with >70%.
It’s not a problem of course, but I would like to understand what’s happening. Is there so much “air” in A2000 db’s? I have db’s created in A2.0 and “inherited” in 95 & 97, and they grew steadily in each version. Now I can pack a db again on a single good old floppy…
Does anyone know what’s happening behind the scenes?