I was just talking to the boys upstairs and He says...

[jda]

I don't have clients. I have users who purchase and use a 
shrinkwrapped (well, not really shrinkwrapped these days, but...) 
app. If you survey commercial (consumer) database products on the 
Mac, you'd find that the large majority do not divvy up the databases 
into multiple files. Those that do tend to have been ported from 
Windows (and it shows). It makes things unnecessarily messy. I've had 
excellent experiences with single file databases. I'm not saying that 
anyone should or shouldn't using single file dbs, but they are 
certainly superior for my, and my user's, needs.

Jon

>I'm not sure how or what you are developing but I would think that 
>you could make your application function with the 4 files and still 
>make it transparent to the end user. As the developer, it would give 
>you a lot more flexibility for the inevitable last minute changes 
>that clients come up with.
>--holly
>
>>>I'd re-consider "only one". I think you'll find that over time, 
>>>this might cause more maintenance problems for you.
>>>
>>
>>I politely disagree, especially for a consumer product (don't know 
>>what platform you are on, but on Macs this would be alien to most 
>>users). I have one db file, but include a menu option to reindex 
>>the database. My users find that quite natural. Finding a .idx file 
>>and trashing it is OK for a developer or a savvy user, but not for 
>>novices (IMHO, of course).
>>