Tore,

I agree that the memo-based approach is much less attractive when updates can occur arbitrarily in any 'partition' (table) of a database that is live over an extended span of time. But if we talk 'CD-ROMs for customers' then this aspect does not apply, since CD-ROMs are frozen when they are manufactured (and CD-ROMs are so small that partitioning is not necessary and a single table will always do the job).

As regards the other statement - would you find it acceptable if I upgraded the 'small' to 'medium'? ;-)

Sure, file open performance can be improved dramatically by choosing an appropriate directory structure. But this addresses only one particular drawback of the file-based approach; the are others. On the other hand, the file-based approach does have unique advantages over the memo approach and so none of the approaches is superior to the other in all cases (I think I said as much in my earlier article).

However, unless special considerations apply I still think it is more logical to put data into table columns instead of external files. *g*