Re: compress/compact database?

"Sean M" <smckeownNO_at_BACKSIESearthlink.net> wrote in message news:3CD1BE14.20F0B06F_at_BACKSIESearthlink.net...
>
>
> Sergey Adamenko wrote:
> >
> > If your datafiles are stored on NTFS partition under NT/W2000, you can
set
> > 'Compressed' attribute for your datafiles.
> > I do so when working with some of my testing DB: Oracle work pretty
good.
> > But there is performance cost you would pay when intensive
> > WRITE-to-datafiles operations will occure. Later this will cause
> > considerable fragmentation on the OS partiotion.
>
> Wait, isn't this a really bad idea? I mean, when you add a regular
> datafile to an Oracle tablespace, it's pretty much empty and therefore
> highly compressible. So you could theorectically add a bunch of huge
> (empty!) datafiles to a compressed drive without any problems and fill
> it. But what happens when you actually try to fill those datafiles with
> data? There's no room left on the disk.... I'd assume you'd get some
> nasty errors. So what's the point of the compression? I'd be surprised
> if it's even supported.
>

No, it is supported (well, you can certainly do it, anyway). But I agree entirely: it's a daft thing to do in my book. Partly for the reasons you give. Partly because compression doesn't come free: decompressing requires CPU cycles. Partly because compression algorithms are a potential source of future corruption and errors, possibly. Partly because disk space is relatively cheap.

Regards
HJR
> Regards,
> Sean
Received on Thu May 02 2002 - 18:12:46 CDT