Re: should initial = next?

I saw a another comment by Dave Ensor:

"Your goal is to minimize the number of extents on disk. Access to contiguous areas of disk is much faster than access to noncontiguous areas. In one test that we did on a 4,000-row table, we found that when the entire table fit on one extent, it took 0.76 second to scan it; when the table was spread over 10 extents, it took 3.62 seconds.

We have found that the existence of a small number of such extents (fewer than five) doesn't seem to affect performance very much, but it is still good practice to store your objects in a single extent. (In the next section, we describe how to size the table for the reorganization while not wasting valuable disk space.)"

so the other statement I'm speaking about below are in http://www.dbazine.com/ensor1.html

In one article it's basd to have extents and in the other its fine to have extents, in one artice you should squeeze the table into one extent, presumably the next then isn't the same size, and in the other next should = initial.

Thanks for the comments so far guys, I just seem to be getting complicting ideas, even from the Author. Are the comments from Dave above to for older versions of oracle or did he change his mind?

Steve Salvemini wrote:
>
> Hi, I've read recently of the importance setting the initial extent size
> and all next extent sizes to the same value, and that the overhead of
> for eg 1000 extents is insignificant compared to the gains [Dave Ensor -
> BMC Software]
> (I hope I'm reading this right Dave!)
>
> Anyway, as an example, if I've got a table of 900Mb, currently we are
> setting:
> initial extent to 900Mb
> next entent of 256K
> max extents 400
>
> From reading this article, is it better to have a setting something like
> initial extent to 1098 K
> next entent of 1098 K
> max extents 1000
> (ie 1098*1024 * 600 extents = 900Mb, leaving 200 extents free (=200*1098
> = 219Mb for growth))
>
> Is it generally accepted out there that this is a better approach or is
> this splitting hairs (or did I totally misunderstand this) ?

-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------

Steven Salvemini
Peoplesoft Technical Specialist, Information Technology Services
ADELAIDE UNIVERSITY SA 5005
AUSTRALIA
Tel: +61 8 8303 6358  Fax: +61 8 8303 4400
Email: steve.salvemini_at_adelaide.edu.au

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