Hello
The zip file created for the web update is more than 200 mb larger than my database file. This has not happened before. Normally it is the opposite i.e the zip file is smaller. What could be causing this?
Eren Turak
Hi Eren,
The MDB does not contain the map files.
Cheers,
-Justin
Hello Justin
I dont’ quite understand this because this is the first time that this has happened (that the zip file is bigger than the mdb file) and I am not aware of changing anything. Could it be that I inadvertently ticked or unticked a box somewhere? If so which box would that be?
Regards
Eren
Hello Justin
It might also help to let you know that the “include maps” option in the we update tab was unticked when I created the zip file.
Regards
Eren
Not sure. When you open the ZIP file, what do you see?
I see one huge .CTS file (1.4 GB) and a .TXT file (105kb). The MDB file is 302 MB
Could you please put your MDB on a share and send me a link? Thanks!
If that did not work , try this
Cheers
Eren
This time with the actual link!
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1cUZOI5py6T3tJo01vVwqiCS9Huw-t5Z0?usp=sharing
Regards
Eren
Hello Justin
The .mdb file .def file and the .zip file are all in the that folder. The link is for the folder so you should be able to access everything in it. Please let me know if you cannot access them.
Regards
Eren
Hi Eren,
I received the files, thanks!
The Element images are stored in the database as JPEG and are decompressed when creating a package. Zip compression is worse than JPEG for images, so the package ends up being bigger. This is expected, i.e. not a bug, just an inefficiency.
We generally are not adding new features to Classic at this point.
Cheers,
-Justin
Thanks Justin
OK that makes sense. What I don’t understand is why it happened to this particular database and not the others. As I said earlier, the zip files for none of my other databases are bigger than the MDB files so this was a big surprise. Clearly that decompression is only happening with this particular database. I think that it happened after I exported the database (thinking that this would lead to a smaller file) as a CTX file but then opened it and saved it as an MDB file. This seems to have irreversibly changed something. Do you have any suggestions about how I might be able to reverse this so that I am getting the same result as for my other databases.
On the other question you raised i.e. that you are not supporting new features in CyberTracker classic. I assume that this means that you are encouraging everyone to move to CyberTracker online. I would be very happy to do this but I am at a total loss about how to start and would really appreciate some advice on this. For example if I wanted to re-create the database you have just seen, would that be possible? How would I start?
Regards
Eren
Hi Eren,
I can see that many of the Element images in this database are large - some more than 3000x3000 pixels. This ends up translating to about 15MB per image and that is what is exploding the exported file size.
We will continue to fix blocking bugs in Classic. We are encouraging people to move to modern back-ends. CyberTracker Online will take a while to reach feature parity with Classic, but you can also use ODK/KoBo/Survey123/SMART and even Google Forms.
Much of what you have is supported in CyberTracker Online, but all the data analysis would need to be done via Excel after exporting a CSV.
If you would like to stick with Classic and just want to reduce the file size, then you can do this by pre-scaling the images to something like 512x512.
Cheers,
-Justin
Thanks Justin
I will aim to slowly move towards CyberTracker online.
Regards
Eren