Stacks vs Versions vs both

[Ted]

I have a about 210,000 total images in my database, made up mostly of NEF/JPG pairs, but also have some TIF and PSD images.  I have about 500 panorama photos made up of almost 6000 original and modified images.  There are also about 1500 'better' photos where I have created different sizes of each photo that are kept in a different directory structure (same disk).

I have the NEF/JPG pairs set up as buddy files to keep them together, and all photos (except the 'better' JPG images) are in stacks which include the TIF and PSD, when available.

I've just started looking at Versions and like that I can link those 'better' photos back to their original images and propagate metadata to them.

I use auto-stacks on everything except the panoramas where I must use manual-stacks.  I have auto Versions turned on, but only need them for the 'better' photos and their originals - but I don't really want to manually link 1500 sets of photos.

My concerns/questions are about performance (haven't seen any significant reduction in speed yet) with both stacks and versions turn on.  Is there a better way of doing what I'm doing? 

[Ferdinand]

I haven't noticed any performance hit from versions.  I don't use stacks often enough to comment.

My understanding is that for versions, IMatch has a table of fiel relations in the database.  So IMatch isn't engaged in a perpetual search for masters and versions and buddy files each time you click on a file.  You have to refresh file relations when something changes, although there is an option under background processing to do this automatically when a folder is rescanned, but this doesn't change my point that a table in the database is used to connect files.

I guess the question is what you want to achieve with versions.  They are useful for finding other related files.  You can use them to propagate metadata.  You can use file relations to create version stacks, which save screen space and simplify the file window in some situations.  Are any of these things useful to you?

What you describe seems sensible to me and I doubt that there would be much of a performance hit, based on my experience and from what I have read from Mario's utterances.

[Ted]

Ferdinand, thanks for your reply. 

I was just trying to do a sanity check on my methods and it sounds like I should be alright.  Thanks also for mentioning version stacks - I remembered there was something like that, but couldn't remember the name.  Looks like it might even be able to replace regular stacks in some cases - especially if I use the 'As visual' option to improve the looks of my NEF file.