RE: os cache vs. db cache

I'd be curious to hear anyone's reasons for preferring OS cache to DB cache.  

It seems pretty clear cut to me that it is better to allow Oracle to manage its own cache since it has much more knowledge available internally to help predict which blocks are most likely to be needed again. I've had good results with CIO (Concurrent, a.k.a non-buffered, non-inode-locking I/O) on AIX, but I did increase db_cache_size to make up for the lack of filesystem buffering - in one case from 600M to 1500M, in another I just used CIO from the beginning so there was no before/after comparison, but performance has been excellent with CIO. In the case where I switched from regular, buffered I/O to CIO and increased db_cache_size from 600M to 1500M, the performance of a fixed set of batch jobs improved from an average runtime of 166 minutes to 129 minutes - so a 22% reduction in runtime, but it's difficult to say how much of that improvement was from switching to CIO and how much was just due to the increase in db_cache_size alone.  

Here's a great paper specifically on AIX CIO for more info: http://www-03.ibm.com/servers/aix/whitepapers/db_perf_aix.pdf

From: oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org
[mailto:oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org] On Behalf Of Robyn

Over the years, I've read differing opinions on balancing the os cache and the database cache.

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