Re: Pad temp extents a few bytes larger than sort_area_size?

Hi,

sort_area_size is used during the exec phase of the statement, it drops back to sort_area_retained_size during fetch. All sort memory is released (by Oracle) after the statement is done, i.e. with the beginning of the next statement (select or commit or whatever).

Let me give this information: It's true that oracle returns the sort memory to the OS, at least it tries to by called free(). But, on several Unix flavors the free library call does not return the memory to the OS rather than keeping in for future process memory allocations. That means, that the _used_ sort_area memory is a HWM of memory, which is never returned to the OS (unless the process terminates, of cource).

Regards
Stephan Received on Mon Mar 25 2002 - 05:05:46 CST