Subj : Re: Storing 20 million randomly accessible documents in compressed form
To   : comp.programming
From : Gene
Date : Mon Sep 05 2005 12:49 pm

If you can use a standard database product (like Adaptive Server
Anywhere) that allows compressed databases, this problem disappears.

If you can't, then your approach is reasonable (as is Jongware's).  Not
sure that with 200,000 zip files you will get 1.7GB on a CD, though.
You'll need a compression ratio of well over 2 to 1.  A single zip file
gets about 1.8 to 1 for average text.  Have you done any tests to see
what kinds of results zip is getting on your data?

.