General Library Question

[Renee_Tanner@adobeforums.com]

We're about to change our workflow using libraries. We'll be putting a lot of information into a library ... and depending on it.
The question is, how many items can a library hold. Any recommendation is welcome.

[Arnold_German@adobeforums.com]

We've tried more than 100 and it still works. You try going beyond that but what's the use? It would become difficult to find what you need.

[Renee_Tanner@adobeforums.com]

That's what we're trying to determine, though. At what point do we look for a subset within the library ... or just do a separate library.
Thanks.

[Dave_Saunders@adobeforums.com]

It all depends on how you plan to work with the library. If, for example, you have a script that sorts through the items based on triggers in the text to insert/update content or even to take content from the text and format it according to the template in the library, then the length of the library is kind of irrelevant.

I just wrote this script to see how large a library could be. Before running the script, I created and kept open a library named "Test" and then I set the script running on my 2Ghz iMac/20.

myDoc = app.documents.add();
myTF = myDoc.pages[0].textFrames.add({geometricBounds:[0,0,"1i", "3i"], contents:"This is a test"});
myLib = app.libraries[0];
while (true) {
myCount = myLib.assets.length;
myName = "Asset " + String(myCount);
myAsset = myLib.store(myTF);
myAsset.name = myName;
if ((myCount + 1) % 100 == 0) {
if (!confirm("Number of assets in library = " + String(myCount + 1) + ". Continue?")) {
exit();
}
}
}

It was rather slower than I expected, but after about six and a half minutes, it reached 700 items. I'm running it again to see how long it takes to get to 800. I suspect that there is no actual limit on the number of items you can have in a library. It's a matter of what your workflow is and whether or not you can manage so many from a user point of view.

It reached 800 after less than a minute and that's enough for now! If you want to go further, run the script yourself.

Dave