I'm writing an accounting app, and thought I'd store ID's for the accounts rather than account names, because "27" is shorter than "Chase Checking". (Of course, there's another table that ties the account numbers to account names.) Using ID's instead of account names saves only a few extra bytes for one entry, but multiplied by at least three entries per transaction, and thousands of transactions, it adds up. But does it add up "too much"?
Here's a sample line of data with account numbers:
Code: Select all
10/21/19 1199199600 356.20 05 16 SomeHost: Registration & webhosting, 2 years
Code: Select all
10/21/19 1199199600 356.20 Chase Checking Office Expense SomeHost: Registration & webhosting, 2 years
It's not a problem if someone changes an account name, that's a simple change to the database to update the affected records.
I'm not worried about the data file growing ever larger year after year, because different years can be stored in different files. In fact, that's one reason I'm writing this software: the commercial app I was using insisted on keeping all years in a single file, and since that single file recently got corrupted, I'm stuck with having to re-enter thousands of transactions for six years' worth of data.