As I understand, temporary tables are stored in the local workstation RAM and this is what makes them fast. The downside is that that they use system memory, which in a computer with not enough memory can slow down the system. Sound like an oxymoron, doesn't it? This is why I always recommend my client to have as much memory as possible, while keeping in mind that 32 bit systems are limited to 4 GB total or 2 GB per process (I understand there is ways to tweak this up to 3 GB); I believe the 2 GB limit is also true for 32 bit applications running in a 64 bit system in the compatibility mode.
Because of this, I always create a temporary table just before it will be used and delete right afterwards. When creating or debugging code, I also have the portion of the code that creates the table in a separate command file that I can run at any time to create the temporary table on the fly for debugging. Now, when creating temporary "files" in a common directory, I preface the file name with the user name to prevent other users from over-writing and/or using the files and again, I delete them at the end of the procedure. Javier, Javier Valencia, PE O: 913-829-0888 H: 913-397-9605 C: 913-915-3137 From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Karen Tellef Sent: Tuesday, January 08, 2013 10:18 AM To: RBASE-L Mailing List Subject: [RBASE-L] - Thoughts about temp tables? Since the list has been slow, let me throw a question out there. When you write a program that uses temp tables, do you leave the temp tables out there? Or do you delete them? I always leave them, simply because I sometimes want to get to the r> prompt and look at the temp table. I'm not sure whether there's any space/memory/performance issues with having them there. The reason it comes to mind is that last week I had a program fail, and it turns out that another programmer on this client (we work as a team) and I happened to pick the same name for a column to use in a temp table, and of course we used a different data type! If I work alone I have a pretty good memory of what I might have used for temp table column names (although not 100%). And I try to use existing column names whenever possible. What do you do? Karen
