>Hi there,
>
>Does anybody have any thoughts on getting round the 2GB DBF file limitation for database files? As I understand it, it is a restriction imposed from the operating systems, but I would like to hear of any techniques which involve file splitting or similar to help get around this.

It isn't the OS. In Windows NT, you can have files with much more than 2 GB. I think the limit is 4 GB for FAT32 (for individual files; partitions can be up to a few TB).

>The problem has arisen because I need to run a matching program on DBF files as a repeated process by importing text files and frequently the size of the files is causing problems.

You can:

Keep the text files as separate files, and only maintain a reference (the filename) in a DBF field.

Split the DBF file horizontally, for instance by years.

Split the DBF file vertically, if you have more than one large field.

Use a database server, like Oracle or SQL-Server, as back-end.

HTH, Hilmar.

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