drastic change in db size

[DBinPhilly]

I have an application with front end programming and the database in the back end. There are about 12-15 users of the program, all accessing the same back end on a server.

I reorganized the database a month or so ago (it had grown to about 150MB) and the back end was about 90MB three days ago. I checked on the db size last night and it had expanded to 336MB.

Why would a database expand so much so rapidly? Data has nothing to do with it, as the growth of the back end has been relatively constant for the last 10 years (yes, it's a very mature db).

I would welcome any ideas. If I have a problem, I'd like to nip it in the bud.

[hansup]

Is 336MB the size after Compact? If not, what is the size after Compact?

[DBinPhilly]

after compact and repair, the original database - 362MB by this morning - was reduced to 69MB.

I'm concerned about the reason for the original increase in size. I just happened to notice it, but I'm worried that there is some sort of corruption problem which must be addressed.

[hansup]

I don't think we can tell you whether data corruption is contributing to that file size bloat.

Do you have any indications of actual data corruption?

One example would be a query whose selection criteria references an indexed field expression. If the index is corrupted, the query could fail to return rows where a match exists in the data source. Dropping and recreating the index would likely cure that problem.