How much entries in your bib file?

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1

How much entries are in your bib-file?

I am comming from Zotero and in some projects I was using Citavi. I don’t like to seperate my libraries.
This causes to blow up the library with thousends of entries. Do you think JabRef can handle a bib-file with over 10.000 (e.g. 25.000) entries and more? Do you see a technical limitation? Which part of the hardware does the limitation?

2

My database is around 600 entries big, which is absolutely no problem. We have a database for testing that contains over 6000 entries. In this range, you will sometimes notice small delays (mostly in combination with a lot of groups; but this problem is on our agenda). I think, 20.000 entries shouldn’t be a problem. The limiting factor will be your memory. With the 6000 entries db, JabRef uses around 1 GB of RAM and this should scale more or less linearly with the number of entries (so I would suspect 2 GB with 20.000). Moreover, loading / saving will take a few seconds for that many entries.

3

Thanks again for your detailed answer. This sounds good.
Of course Citavi is laking with 20.000 entries (SQLite database behind it), too.

4

My most important working database actually has some 50.000 entries. As Tobias said, loading will take some seconds. Saving is quicker.

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5

Wow. This is impressing :thumbsup:

6

@adessec & @Tobias: This are very nice numbers. :wink:

As a new user I would suggest another improvement of the documentation.

Literature Software is powerfull and flexibel. You can have different solutions for one problem/job. I know a Citavi power-user who teached me a lot and who is working totaly different from my way.

It would be very intereseting and helpfull if some users would share their “user stories”. How do you organize your stuff? What is in your database? Which categorie system do you use? Which settings (bibtex-key generation) and feauters of JabRef do you use? Which add-on software (browser, …) do you use?

For my self I would learn a lot from stories like that. It would improve my own way how to organize my stuff and I can learn about new (or for me unknown) feauters of JabRef.

7

Thanks for the idea. We should think about how to get users’ stories.
For some of your issues, partial answers can be found in a survey: https://github.com/mlep/JabRefSurveyResultAnalysis/blob/master/Analysis.md

8

Your link gives a 404. I think you mean https://www.jabref.org/surveys/2015/analysis?

9

Yes, indeed. Sorry…