What is the maximum number of contacts Address Book will support?

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Level 1

6 points

What is the maximum number of contacts Address Book will support?

We are a small business who have recently switched over to Kerio Connect. We are currently using Mac Address Book to store & share contacts (sharing via MobileMe), but have been told by our IT support company that we have too many contacts (approx. 4500) and Address Book will not support this many. They have said that this is why we are having issues with contacts emails and phone numbers scrambling. Is there a limit to the amount of contacts that Address Book will support?

Mac OS X (10.6.5)

Posted on Jun 7, 2011 5:35 PM

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Answer 1

twtwtw

Level 5

4,936 points

Jun 7, 2011 7:00 PM in response to DFilms

I don't believe there is a maximum number - address book uses an sql database and UUID indexing - and if there is it's certainly much larger than 4500. There may be limits imposed by sharing, or by the IT company, but there shouldn't be anything inherent to AB itself. I suspect someone is talking out of their hat.

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Answer 2

DFilms Author

Level 1

6 points

Jun 7, 2011 7:32 PM in response to twtwtw

I suspect you may be right! They (the IT Company) said they had never heard of somebody having so many contacts, which seemed very strange as they provide support for a lot of companies. Perhaps our syncing & sharing contacts issues are stemming from how we are sharing, rather than how many we are sharing! Thanks for your reply.

If anyone else had further insights into this matter I would love to hear them!

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Answer 3

twtwtw

Level 5

4,936 points

Jun 7, 2011 7:46 PM in response to DFilms

DFilms wrote:

I suspect you may be right! They (the IT Company) said they had never heard of somebody having so many contacts, which seemed very strange as they provide support for a lot of companies.

lol - perhaps they only provide support for failing companies? you should look into that… 😉

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Answer 4

Jun 8, 2011 8:39 AM in response to DFilms

Having values shuffle in the fashion described is indicative of a database corruption or an application bug, and that can (also) effect performance. I'd suggest trying to get a footprint of that problem, and then report it to Apple.

And there is no "lol" matter here. 4500 is a comparatively large number of contacts for Address Book Server, and no, AB doesn't tend to scale all that well and isn't (per information attributed to Apple) intended as a shared contact store.

See this thread and (as you'll learn as you read that thread) make certain your DNS configuration is valid. Within that thread, specifically see Dr Timbo's post circa Dec 14, 2010 7:31 PM in that thread, and Strontium90's post circa Dec 23, 2010 3:03 PM.

Just because there's an SQL database underneath doesn't imply that the design will scale, nor that the application will have acceptable performance. It's possible for an SQL database to have millions of records and to run fast, and it's equally possible for a database to have several dozen records and the application can run slowly.

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