Oracle sure loves disk space for storage, doesn't it?

We have a schema whose data file has grown to about 560MB. Same data when exported using full export only takes about 43MB. And when this data is imported to local tables like under Paradox or Access, it only takes up about 50MB of space. The space taken by Oracle is after an import into an empty file (i.e. starting from scratch). Why does Oracle gobbles up all that space? The data files was set initialy to be 10MB and set to grow by 5MB each time. I know that the storage requirements could depend on a guzzilion different things, but we know the size of our data and to see an import file sized 43MB balloon to 560MB in a data file is really surprising. It realy throws off our storage estimates and planning. Where do you think we should start looking? Or, is this normal for Oracle? In the later case, I would love to know what the storage is being used for!

Regards,
Nasir Noor (nnoor_at_cris.com) Received on Mon May 24 1999 - 17:51:07 CDT