how do I compress or reduce my database size

[comesee]

how do I compress or reduce my database size

[vbgamer45]

How big is it? Generally I would look at unimportant logs like your error_log for smf

In SMF there is a forum maintenance option to clean unimportant logs

[comesee]

i just want to compress the whole file

[GigaWatt]

You want to compress it and use it (load it in a database engine) or just compress it for offline storage (backup)?

The second one is easy. I'd suggest a 7z archive, but a simple zip or a gzip archive will also be a good choice . The size reduction varies, but usually, it's not above 30 or 40% of the original size. My database compressed in zip is around 20% of it's original file size.

[Kindred]

How big is it? Why do you want to compress it?