>is there any way to compress the *.dbf file and use it in the application.
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>i have table whos size is approx 700 mb and i want that this dbf is on cd and in compress form and my application is on the hard drive of the comp. now i have a compress dbf and i am using that compressed dbf and use it from cd drive if it is possilbe than please lat me know.
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Not directly - you might be able to use an OS-based compression such as DriveSpace3 on the CD volume itself, and access it using drive compression (I don't know if DriveSpace is applicable to a CDFS volume). You'd considerably complidcate the installation procedure, and in all likelihood tie it to only being deployable under Win9x. There may be third-party products like Stacker that could do this, but again, the complexity of instllation increases dramatically.

You can't compress the data field by field and use indexes against it, query times would suffer badly since each record would have to be decompressed on the fly, and the record length would become variable. Youy can't access it compressed within a Zip file; VFP, while it can add software to perform zip operations, the OS function calls that read and write the data do not have this functionality available to themselves.

You also have the issue of related support files - .CDX/IDX files needed for the file, an associated .FPT if necessary, and thye major limitations of not being able to alter the header of the DBF, so that building tags on the fly becomes essentailly impossible.

Your best bet is to explore a compressed file system if you are willing to invest in the purchase of the necessary software licenses and develop the mechanism to deploy it for target systesms.

TANSTAAFL