Temporary tables in memory

Is there a way in Oracle 8i (or later, but would prefer 8i solution) of avoiding the writing to disk of temporary tables: i.e. tables created with 'create global temporary table'...? Alternatively, can someone confirm it is not possible so I can stop worrying about it?

For instance, it seems to me you are required to store temporary tables in a tablespace, and a tablespace must be stored on disk. It appears that that disk cannot be a memory mapped device - but maybe someone knows a way around this.

I have a rule of thumb that, in the absence of other information, disks are nine times as slow as memory. As the application makes significant use of temporary tables, the overhead is significant. I cannot do anything about the application and if I told you it was a Sybase to Oracle port, you might guess at why the temporary tables are used.

Also, do temporary tables get logged and, if so, is there a way of turning this off?

Thanks in advance
Chris Received on Thu Aug 28 2003 - 08:12:40 CDT