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Question

SHP and TAB have large differences on file size for same features. Why?

  • January 13, 2021
  • 1 reply
  • 22 views
juanmahere
Supporter
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Hi,

I may be missing some information regarding the TAB format, but I find quite inexplicable this behavior on file sizes:

 

After creating a couple of layers, and sent to different formats (SHP and TAB) I appreciated that some of the brand new layers have large differences on sizes when comparing with same layers from a past delivery.

Here are the figures from the 20th and 21st version of same layer:

 

table_with_figuresSo, the new layer has decreased in vertexes, that's not peculiar, the strange thing is that with around 1k less vertexes SHP files decreased around 70MBs (0.001%) while TAB files decreased 141.000 MBs (55%).

 

Is there any explanation for this?

 

Thanks for your help!

Juanma,

 

 

1 reply

muzhnasto
Contributor
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  • muzhnastoContributor
  • Contributor
  • January 19, 2021

In simple terms,

-SHP stores geometry

-TAB stores text attributes.

And what you have more in the data then has a larger size.

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