Column Order

Being from the "old school" of Database Design, I was always taught that the
most referenced columns should appear at the begiining of the table and the
lesser referenced columns and variable length columns, mem fields, hlk
fields, should be at the end of the table.

Are these fundamental rules true of Access???

Or should I just group logically and not care about placement???

On Thu, 17 Mar 2005 08:09:08 -0800, RTP
wrote:

Being from the "old school" of Database Design, I was always taught that the
most referenced columns should appear at the begiining of the table and the
lesser referenced columns and variable length columns, mem fields, hlk
fields, should be at the end of the table.

Are these fundamental rules true of Access???

Or should I just group logically and not care about placement???

I'd be inclined to do so. The old-school rule was based on databases
which in fact had each record stored as a contiguous string on disk.
Access doesn't; the internal storage mode is proprietary and not
documented, but IME and IMO, it's no faster and no slower to retrieve
the eleventh field than the first.

John W. Vinson[MVP]

I believe there is no performance advantage in column placement. Just go
with the logical order.

Your users should never see the tables anyway, so it shouldn't matter :-)
--
Good Luck!

Graham Mandeno [Access MVP]
Auckland, New Zealand

"RTP" wrote in message
...
Being from the "old school" of Database Design, I was always taught that
the
most referenced columns should appear at the begiining of the table and
the
lesser referenced columns and variable length columns, mem fields, hlk
fields, should be at the end of the table.

Are these fundamental rules true of Access???

Or should I just group logically and not care about placement???