Re(2): 2GB limit issue in 5.5?
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote Fri, 27 Oct 2006 10:09:38 -0500 Anyhow, I just really wonder how many people really run into the 2 GB limit. I know at least one person ;- I have actually reached a situation where I am looking for an alternative to PowerMail because of the 2GB limit. I have been using two DBs for quite some time, but definitely do not feel like having three or four or five... In essence I like everything in PowerMail *except* the 2 GB limit (and lack of any elegant support for dealing with it). Olaf Druemmer
Re: 2GB limit issue in 5.5?
Lane Roathe wrote: The issue is that I am getting the warning in powermail about it's 2GB database size limit. However, the database it's warning me about is only 10.3MB. How is your named your message database file? If the name is not Message Database, PowerMail could be confused. Jérôme - PowerMail Engineering - In this world, you generally get what you pay for. PowerMail is worth paying for. Download a demo. You might just like it better than your current email program. That's how I switched to this great program that really performs. PowerMail user comment on www.versiontracker.com Download a demo version from www.ctmdev.com -
Re: 2GB limit issue in 5.5?
On 10/27/06 at 11:49 AM, PowerMail Engineering ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) said: The issue is that I am getting the warning in powermail about it's 2GB database size limit. However, the database it's warning me about is only 10.3MB. How is your named your message database file? If the name is not Message Database, PowerMail could be confused. On a related note, will the 2 gig limit be going away in a future version? Alternately, will we be able to use several databases simultaneously (i.e., let us split a 1.8 gig database into 3 or 4 smaller ones, but have them all open concurrently)? Steve Abrahamson Ascending Technologies FileMaker 7 Certified Developer http://www.asctech.com [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: 2GB limit issue in 5.5?
On a related note, will the 2 gig limit be going away in a future version? Alternately, will we be able to use several databases simultaneously (i.e., let us split a 1.8 gig database into 3 or 4 smaller ones, but have them all open concurrently)? Can I ask a serious question? How often do people run into this 2 GB limit? I find myself every 6 months or so, going through and deleting hundreds of emails. I find that after 6 months I can usually get rid of 30% of my email, 1 year later I can get rid of even more mail. Usually I find for myself, that it's laziness rather than really needing email as the main reason I end up keeping so much of the email I have (do I really need Buy.com's daily specials 2 years later? --- don't laugh, I have found some on my computer). Anyhow, I just really wonder how many people really run into the 2 GB limit. Wayne
Re: 2GB limit issue in 5.5?
My mail database is currently around the 1.3 - 1.4 gig point. I compress it monthly (when I remember to and when I have time, as it takes a long time), but it re-grows as databases often do. I use PowerMail for business email, and I don't delete any of it. I keep client and project notes, correspondence, etc. I keep several mail lists' mail in PowerMail. And I keep family stuff there, too. (BTW, for the archivists out there; I personally find it a very useful resource to have all mail together and searchable, without having to say let's see... is the thing I'm looking for in my mail archive program, or my mail program, or my active mail database, or my other mail database, etc.) From my reading of this list, there are a significant number of people like me, some with even more mail than I have. Anyway, HTH. Steve On 10/27/06 at 10:09 AM, Wayne Brissette ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) said: On a related note, will the 2 gig limit be going away in a future version? Alternately, will we be able to use several databases simultaneously (i.e., let us split a 1.8 gig database into 3 or 4 smaller ones, but have them all open concurrently)? Can I ask a serious question? How often do people run into this 2 GB limit? I find myself every 6 months or so, going through and deleting hundreds of emails. I find that after 6 months I can usually get rid of 30% of my email, 1 year later I can get rid of even more mail. Usually I find for myself, that it's laziness rather than really needing email as the main reason I end up keeping so much of the email I have (do I really need Buy.com's daily specials 2 years later? --- don't laugh, I have found some on my computer). Anyhow, I just really wonder how many people really run into the 2 GB limit. Steve Abrahamson Ascending Technologies FileMaker 7 Certified Developer http://www.asctech.com [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: 2GB limit issue in 5.5?
On Friday, October 27, 2006, Wayne Brissette sent forth: On a related note, will the 2 gig limit be going away in a future version? Alternately, will we be able to use several databases simultaneously (i.e., let us split a 1.8 gig database into 3 or 4 smaller ones, but have them all open concurrently)? Can I ask a serious question? How often do people run into this 2 GB limit? I find myself every 6 months or so, going through and deleting hundreds of emails. I find that after 6 months I can usually get rid of 30% of my email, 1 year later I can get rid of even more mail. Usually I find for myself, that it's laziness rather than really needing email as the main reason I end up keeping so much of the email I have (do I really need Buy.com's daily specials 2 years later? --- don't laugh, I have found some on my computer). Anyhow, I just really wonder how many people really run into the 2 GB limit. Wayne I maintain a database that has never gone over 100 MB AFAIK, nor is it likely to in the future. It averages 90-95 MB before compaction and 78- 85 MB after compaction. I still have over 10,000 messages in the database. Like Wayne, I go through my folders every few months and toss quite a bit. On the other hand, I don't use it for my business per se, rather it is an alternate archive for work but mainly for home use. Even some of my work email has a shelf life. That being said, having a parent folder represent a different database or similar setup would be interesting. Thunderbird takes that approach and sees to function well. Just a thought. -- Tim Lapin [EMAIL PROTECTED] G4/AGP/400OS 10.3.9PowerMail 5.5 640 MB RAM 40+40 GB HDs
Re: 2GB limit issue in 5.5?
Wayne Brissette wrote: Can I ask a serious question? How often do people run into this 2 GB limit? About once every two to three weeks. I currently have about 230k messages in my database, and get about 350 new emails each day. The puzzling thing (I do not understand since I'm no DB guru) is that after compacting, the database is just slightly over 1 GB in size. Yet, it fills to nearly 2 GB in the mentioned three weeks. This is funny because I sure do not receive 200k messages in three weeks (which is what my db contains in about 1 GB of space after compacting). It looks like the DB grows not linear with its amount of mail stored in it, but at least quadratically or near exponentially when not compacting it. This is also a technical question to the CTM team - why does my DB grow that fast, and why am I able to shrink it to about 55% its former size only by compacting the additional 10k emails of those mentioned three weeks? I'd guess I should be able to get about at least 6-9 months worth of email before compacting is required again, yet - I don't :-(( Regards, Christian.
Re: 2GB limit issue in 5.5?
Picture a sponge: a good part of it is air - holes. Most databases keep available disk blocks available for themselves within the database file; they don't set them out, but when data comes in and gets deleted, it leaves a hole. When more data comes in, if it doesn't fit within an available hole, it'll allocate a little more space to the file (the file grows) so that it can write the new data in a contiguous block(s). Later, if a smaller chunk of data comes in, it may put that in one of the holes that's big enough to fit it, but think of that one for a moment: that will probably leave a very small hole that's unlikely to ever be filled because typical data isn't small enough for it. Repeat several dozen/hundred/thousand/etc. times a day, depending on your write frequency to the database. Compacting the database will remove all the holes, big and small, just like squeezing out a sponge doesn't decrease the mass of the sponge, but removes all the things inside the sponge that aren't sponge. But when you start writing to it again, it starts over. There's probably a curve to the growth over time - the initial growth after a compact is probably exponentially more than the growth several weeks later. I'd guess it'd level off to some near-linear growth at some point. Still - nothing wrong with compacting regularly. Wouldn't it be a dream if PM could do this in the background during a set time each day - say, you allocate 1am - 6 am every day to this, and it could maintain and groom the database? That'd be cool. But note that this would not necessarily yield a compacted database every morning (compacted databases may not be as efficient as those with breathing room inside them), but if it could combine non-contiguous blocks in some sort of database de-frag routine, and pull out holes under a set threshold, that might be useful. /dreaming On 10/27/06 at 8:18 PM, Christian Roth ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) said: Wayne Brissette wrote: Can I ask a serious question? How often do people run into this 2 GB limit? About once every two to three weeks. I currently have about 230k messages in my database, and get about 350 new emails each day. The puzzling thing (I do not understand since I'm no DB guru) is that after compacting, the database is just slightly over 1 GB in size. Yet, it fills to nearly 2 GB in the mentioned three weeks. This is funny because I sure do not receive 200k messages in three weeks (which is what my db contains in about 1 GB of space after compacting). It looks like the DB grows not linear with its amount of mail stored in it, but at least quadratically or near exponentially when not compacting it. This is also a technical question to the CTM team - why does my DB grow that fast, and why am I able to shrink it to about 55% its former size only by compacting the additional 10k emails of those mentioned three weeks? I'd guess I should be able to get about at least 6-9 months worth of email before compacting is required again, yet - I don't :-(( Regards, Christian. Steve Abrahamson Ascending Technologies FileMaker 7 Certified Developer http://www.asctech.com [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: 2GB limit issue in 5.5?
Re: 2GB limit issue in 5.5? I maintain a database that has never gone over 100 MB AFAIK, nor is it likely to in the future. It averages 90-95 MB before compaction and 78- 85 MB after compaction. I still have over 10,000 messages in the database. This is pretty much my situation. And I have mail going back to 1996. Professionally, I manage global email for a company using Lotus Notes, where a penurious 200Mb mail limit is enforced. IBM (Lotus) makes this bearable by including configurable automatic archiving in the Notes client. The archives are easily accessible (and visually distinguishable) from the regular mail file. The main drawback is that searches can only be performed on one database at a time. I'm happy with the 2 GB limit, but for others, some similar archiving solution combined with Foxtrot searching would probably be better. Regards, - Chris Christopher Plummer ZebraTale, LLC Macintosh Lotus Domino Consulting === ** CHRIS'S UNPREDICTABLE and OCCASIONAL Newsletter for Mac Users ** Check the UNPREDICTABLE archive - http://www.unpredictablemac.com ===
Re: 2GB limit issue in 5.5?
on Fri, Oct 27, 2006 PowerMail Engineering [EMAIL PROTECTED] may have said: The issue is that I am getting the warning in powermail about it's 2GB database size limit. However, the database it's warning me about is only 10.3MB. How is your named your message database file? If the name is not Message Database, PowerMail could be confused. None of my message DB files are named Message Database. Due to the 2GB limit I have to keep a minimum of four active databases, two each for my personal email and two each for my business email. Having each use the filename Message Database caused problems in the past (confusion on which file was used ... although I can't remember if it was PM or the backup process), thus the unique names for each DB. Per the DB size issue; at first I was pretty well entrenched on the 2GB side of things, since having multiple databases is not handy. However, I have since switched to thinking that 2GB is better ... as long as a few caveats are met. The benefits as I see them: 1. Safety; the larger the DB the more email I can potentially loose. 2. Safety; large DB's are more susceptible to damage that is not immediately obvious, leading to backups that are corrupt. 3. Safety; larger files are more prone to damage by system events (power outage, corrupt directory, etc.) 4. Speed; more data takes more time to operate on; PM is fast but after 1GB I can tell a difference. 5. Mobility; I've found it's easier to make backups, transport my DB's, etc. when they are 1GB That said, there are some serious drawbacks; a. Searching; the reason I keep so much email is because I am constantly (really) searching for data. We have customers loose their registration codes from three or more years ago and PM can find those lost codes in my email DB in seconds...except that I have to switch databases which could mean having to decide what to do with emails in progress, etc. b. Splitting; there is no good way to split a database. Currently I have to do this one folder at a time, and I have to somehow figure out where to split, do a merge into the backup DB then merge the folders (because they import to unique folders each time). And then there is the issue of syncing; how to make sure I backup all messages yet don't duplicate any? So I'd be fine with the 2GB limit if a. and b. could be addressed. In the spirit of don't criticize without offering solutions: a. PM already has FoxTrot in it; extend this so it can open multiple PM DBs (and limit it to that so it doesn't compete w/FoxTrot sales). Then add Cmd-Shift-F for Find in multiple or whatever which works just like the normal find but on all DB's in the multiple DB config. b. Make a way to automatically spit a PM DB into two based on date (and other criteria if appropriate), then merge that split data into another DB. It should be as easy as Merge all emails after 10/26/06 into ... where ... is selected by the user. :) PS: and please give me the option to disable double-clicking launching URL's that causes me so many issues throughout the day. Thanks! Lane Roathe President Ideas From the Deephttp://www.ifd.com ___ There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can read binary and those who can't.
Re: 2GB limit issue in 5.5?
On Fri, Oct 27, 200610:09 AM, the following words from Wayne Brissette [EMAIL PROTECTED], emerged from a plethora of SPAM ... On a related note, will the 2 gig limit be going away in a future version? Alternately, will we be able to use several databases simultaneously (i.e., let us split a 1.8 gig database into 3 or 4 smaller ones, but have them all open concurrently)? Can I ask a serious question? How often do people run into this 2 GB limit? I find myself every 6 months or so, going through and deleting hundreds of emails. I find that after 6 months I can usually get rid of 30% of my email, 1 year later I can get rid of even more mail. Usually I find for myself, that it's laziness rather than really needing email as the main reason I end up keeping so much of the email I have (do I really need Buy.com's daily specials 2 years later? --- don't laugh, I have found some on my computer). Anyhow, I just really wonder how many people really run into the 2 GB limit. Wayne I still think saved searches would be great - is that in the future? Like Wayne, I try to keep my email database small and find that I perform the same searches when weeding out old email. -- We are a spectacular, splendid manifestation of life. We have language. . . . We have affection We have genes for usefulness, and usefulness is about as close to a common goal of nature as I can guess at. And finally, and perhaps best of all, we have music. - Lewis Thomas (1913 - 1993), The Medusa and the Snail (1979)
2GB limit issue in 5.5?
Hi all, hoping someone might have an answer to this that I couldn't find with a quick search. The issue is that I am getting the warning in powermail about it's 2GB database size limit. However, the database it's warning me about is only 10.3MB. This only started happening after the upgrade to 5.5 upgraded the said database. Thanks! Lane Roathe President Ideas From the Deephttp://www.ifd.com ___ There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can read binary and those who can't.
