Re: rebuild this index

Hi Daud,

please see my comments inline :o)

Cheers,
Norman (at home).

>> What are the columns of the index ?
>> Are they based on an ever increasing/decreasing sequence or date
>> (leading columns) ?

OK, so this index is a candidate for never needing to be rebuilt - assuming that the data you fill it with is fairly random, you should eventually reuse deleted index entries. If, on the other hand, the index has no deleted entries then blocks will be filled up and splits will occur as and when necessary.

>
> Can I assumed that if deleted rows in the index is 0, most of the
> unused space in the index is due to block splits? This (block split)
> is something that I dont quite fully understand yet. Do you know of
> any good document for this?
>

You can assume that if there are no deleted entries that the free space you have in the index is from a combination of the PCTFREE setting used when the index was created - default is 10% - and the amount of space currently unused in any split blocks.

Good documents :

Do a Google groups search for "index block split" AND "Howard" - there was quite a long discussion on the subject, with Howards usual quality examples, in this very newsgroup.

Chapter 8 of the Wrox Press book Beginning Oracle Programming by Tom Kyte and a few others. Don't be mislead by the title, this book is for everyone, DBAs included. Wrox have gone bust (well their parent company did) so get a copy quickly. I think Wiley have taken on their assets in the meantime.

-- 
Remove a certain other database to reply :o)