This month we are going to talk about Datafile Compression. Datafile Compression is basically a tool used to make your datafile smaller and more manageable.

Before we get too deep into compression, let's get a better understanding of how the datafile works. When you create information (Estimate, Job, Quote) that information is sent to the database, which writes it to the hard drive of the computer thus creating the datafile. The information written to the database takes up physical space on the hard drive that stores the datafile. The more information you create, the larger the datafile becomes and the more physical space that is taken up. As the datafile gets larger, the longer it take to retrieve that information.

How do we make the datafile more manageable? First, Quit PrintPoint and make a copy of the current datafile. Rename the copied datafile to something appropriate. This will be an archive to be used to retrieve historical information as necessary. Launch PrintPoint. Now, you have to decide what date will be the cutoff for deleting older records. Once you've decided which items to delete, go for it and delete them.

At this point a lot of users feel they've made their datafile smaller. However, you've just removed information from the file, we still have to reclaim the physical space from the hard drive. This is where the compacting comes to play. We'll use the 4D Tools application that comes with PrintPoint to compact the data and retrieve the unused physical space.

I've created a tutorial that will guide you through the compacting steps. You can find the tutorial here.