Is there a maximum number of lines that can be inserted in any given scrolling window?

Folks, this one can rather come across as a brain teaser or a catchy certification question, but don't be surprised by how often I get asked during a demo and how often I -- and many others -- have automatically provided the unequivocal answer "Unlimited!". The question comes in various flavors, for example:

  • How many distributions can I add to a journal entry?
  • How many line items can I add to a Sales document?
  • How many line items can I add on a Purchase Order?
Unlimited? The truth is, there is a limit to everything, whether the contraints are imposed by physical storage capacity or by a data type definition, the fact is, it's nonetheless a limit.

So let's take a look.

The Line Sequence Number field in Dynamics GP is generally defined as an integer value. According to Microsoft SQL Server Books Online, an integer requires 4 bytes of storage, which means it can any number between -2^31 and 2^31 or -2,147,483,647 and 2,147,483,647. Now consider this, the first line sequence number in a scrolling window is generally initialized with a value of 16,384 or 2^14, so mathematically speaking, a user will be able to add 131,072 lines or 2^17 before they hit an error and have to resort to inserting distribution lines in between the previous 131,072 ones.

I don't know about you, but 131,072 lines in a scrolling window sound like quite a bit of lines -- but certainly not unlimited -- before you even begin to consider inserting lines in between, but you never know when you will come across that one customer who will push the system to it's limit.

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Until next post!

MG.-
Mariano Gomez, MIS, MCP, MVP, PMP
Maximum Global Business, LLC
http://www.maximumglobalbusiness.com/

Comments

Christina Phillips said…
Hey Mariano!

Would this logic hold true for any scrolling window in GP? Payroll Posting Accounts, for example? I have given the off-the-cuff unlimited many times, but have been second-guessing myself as of late.

Thanks! Christina
September 17, 2009 at 7:54 PM
Mariano Gomez said…
Christina,

Thanks for your query. This logic holds true for all Microsoft Dynamics GP scrolling windows as the premise used to create the sequence numbers in the scrolling window is the same across all modules.

Hope this helps,

MG.-
Mariano Gomez, MVP
September 18, 2009 at 12:16 AM
marvcross said…
Since the DEX_ROW_ID field in all Dynamics tables also are of datatype int, does this mean that the maximum number of entries in any GP table is also 2,147,483,648?
March 2, 2017 at 5:49 AM
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