Emmitt: That is exactly what I was thinking of doing. ASAMOF I worked with Frank Taylor on a project like this. What Frank found out is that when we stored all the PDFs in one subdirectory, it quickly grew to thousands of files. We found that displaying the PDF file in the form was incredibly slow. Separating into year/month subdirectories kept the # of files down and the display was fast. So it takes a while for RBase to search thru thousands of files to find the one you want; another good reason to separate out.
As I said, that's what I was intending on doing, the problem was that I wanted the ability to print about 50 of them at once so that the client could just send to PDF files and print them out at a leisurely pace later. Karen > In our Invoicing Module, we store PDFs of every invoice created. A table > stores invoice number, filename, customer number, invoice date, batch > number, total dollars, etc. A form exists that lets the user hone in on an > invoice they wish to review by selecting customer, date range, or invoice > batch, or they can simply enter the invoice number if it is known. Once they > have located the invoice in question, the form displays the summary > information for the invoice. A button exists to launch the PDF to view the > original document. They can also print or email the document. > > > > We organize the PDFs by year and month. We also load the summary data > and the path to the PDF into a centralized database (we currently have three > invoicing locations) for use by Accounts Receivable. They have the same > lookup / reprint / email capabilities, even though the PDF may be stored on > any one of three servers on the WAN in other states. > > > > This all works quite nicely. All you need is a table to store the basic > information about the document, including the full path to the document, > document name, and sufficient identifying information to allow the user to > locate the document of interest. > > > > Forget about how many PDFs might be involved – that is a non-issue. > Store them in a structured fashion, as in by year and month. Maintain a > table > with enough qualifying information to lead you to a distinct PDF, and > provide the user an interface to get them to the desired document. > > > > If you really are intimidated by the sheer number of documents, then also > write a routine to purge them by date. That task, also quite simple, is > another conversation. > > > > Emmitt Dove > >
