Re: 2 GB myth

"zeb" <spam_at_nowhere.com> wrote in message news:<419f0b8e$0$5181$636a15ce_at_news.free.fr>...
> Hi,
>
> Can I use safely datafile larger than 2 GB ?
> I know it is a file system limitation not oracle limitation,
> now on recent filesystem there is no such limitation.
>
> Is this a "psychologic" limitation ?
> Is there any known bugs ?
> perfomance pb ?
> management ?
>
> Can I go safely with this ??
>
> oracle 8i, 9i
> AIX 4, 5
> HP-UX 11.0

When I had a problem with hp-ux O8i truncating nfs files during a cp, before I figured out what was going on I thought it might be an Oracle tools issue, as it took a number of O versions to debug tools such as exp/imp. Although that was not my case, the Oracle support analyst mentioned he had seen several cases of 2Gb-itis in the tools as late as 8i. That does not bring it above a myth, but is still something to be aware of, especially since unrelated exp/imp bugs have been found in the "final" release of 8i.

I routinely work with 30G files on hp-ux 11 and Windows, now that I know about the nfs problem, simply watching file sizes when moving things around seems to be good enough.

Manageability is another issue, lots of small files can help, be sure you understand the issues of how RMAN creates filesets and requirements of standby databases (if you plan to have any) when deciding. There may be a vanishingly small performance difference for more files versus less (assuming you don't run out of file descriptors, of course), unix is pretty good because it considers everything a file, but sometimes what happens between unix and i/o is more complicated. So, YMMV.

jg

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