What is the maximum size

The maximum size of a Termbase file in Déjà Vu is determined by the Microsoft Jet Database Engine, which is what Déjà Vu uses to handle its databases. The maximum size of a Jet Database file is 2 GigaBytes.

In Déjà Vu, a Termbase will be comprised of one file, with the file extension .dvtdb. This file is a single Jet Database, so the 2 gigabyte limit applies to it.

What happens when the maximum size is reached

When a Jet Database file reaches its maximum size, the Jet Engine may not be able to operate on it. What this means when you are using Déjà Vu is that basic database operations that always work will start to fail randomly and unpredictably, and will therefore make using Déjà Vu impossible.

You should therefore watch the size of your Termbase's files so that you will not be caught unawares when this happens. You should begin to take measures to deal with this when one or more of the Termbase's files reaches a size of 1.5 gigabytes, to be safe.

How to deal with this when the Termbase grows

Déjà Vu has 2 functions that will be invaluable when it comes to dealing with this situation: Compact and Repair.

Compacting and Repairing

Compact will instruct the Jet Engine to compact all the files that constitute a particular Termbase. This will not remove any information from the Termbase; it simply rearranges the information the Termbase's files contain so that it can be stored more efficiently.

The reason Compacting is necessary is that, during normal use, the Jet Engine (and most other Database engines in existence) will prioritize speed of access over frugality of storage in order to provide the best performance, even at the cost of storage space. The cost of this inefficiency is not high, and compacting the Database every now and then removes its effects anyway.

The Repair function includes the Compact functions, as well as several other things, so it can be used instead of the Compact function.

Splitting the Termbase

If the Termbase contains a lot of segments, it may become too large to use even when it is compacted as much as possible. In this case, the only solution is to split the Termbase into several individual Termbases, and spread the information among them.

You can do this in several ways:

• Attach your existing large Termbase to your projects, but configure Déjà to read from it but never write to it, so that it will not grow any more. Then attach a new Termbase to the project, and let Déjà Vu send new segments to that one. This way, only the newer, smaller Termbase will grow, but you still benefit from the information stored in the older and larger one.
• Open the Termbase and export subsets of it to new Termbases. By using filters during the export process, you can ensure that you only export certain segments. If you do this several times, using appropriate export filters, you can export all the segments in the Termbase in batches.