Practical limits of the Organizer database

I understand Elements 3.0 uses Access as its underlying Organizer database. I have these questions:
1. Does a catalog equate to a single MDB file?
2. What is the practical upper limit on the number of photos in a catalog (i.e., at what point does it start to get visibly slower)?
3. Is it possible within Elements to search for a photo across catalogs?
4. Access has a history of corruption problems - has this been a problem for Elements?

Jerry, I can't say anything regarding PSE3, but as it inherited all the organizing features from PSA2, I will answer for that.

1. Does a catalog equate to a single MDB file?




At least with PSA2 it does. You can open the catalog file in Access and edit all the tables. I don't think they changed that in PSE3.

2. What is the practical upper limit on the number of photos in a catalog




In PSA2 the limit is about 50.000 images. At least it's the number Adobe stated in the readmy.txt file.

3. Is it possible within Elements to search for a photo across catalogs?




Not in PSA2. It would be great if Adobe changed that in PSE3, though I doubt it.

4. Access has a history of corruption problems - has this been a problem
for Elements?




Every once in while we have reports of corrupted catalogs in the PSA forum. Nearly all of these could be fixed with PSA's "Recover catalog" command.

Alexander.
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1533 MHz, 1 GB, XP SP2, Canon Ixus 430 (aka S410), CanoScan D1250U2F, German PSE v2.0.2 + PSA v2.0.1 (PSE v3 + PrE v1 soon to come)