I just imported two text files – exported from my banking app – into Panorama X. Those text files have about 50 fields and are 1.7 MB and 3.1 MB in size.
Since some fields in these files are containing static data (repeating in each record, e.g. my name as account owner) I decided to set those fields to the type Choices. I was expecting a massive reduction of the file size — that used to be the result of this operation in Panorama 6.
But the size of my Panorama X databases did not change.
Is the Choices field type at the moment only a UI feature? Does it (still) not save space?
Did you actually change the data type from Text to Choice? Just setting up the list of choices is not enough. It should definitely save space if there are repeating values, exactly like Panorama 6 did. You should be able to verify the size of individual cells with the sizeof( function. Unless there is a huge number of possible choices, the size of a choice field should be 1 byte. I just tested this to make sure, and it definitely worked. In the US Airports field I changed the Airframe Repair field from Text to Choice and the size decreased from 7.1 to 7.09 megabytes. That’s about right as the actual savings should be 10,788 bytes. I was also able to verify the change with sizeof(.