sppurge (Statspack Purge) does not seem to free up space

I am on Oracle 9.2.0.5 on HP UNIX 11i. I created a locally managed tablespace perfstat with freelist space management (i.e. no ASSM).

I collect statspack snapshots several times during a day using commands similar to following:
exec statspack.snap(i_snap_level=>6);
host sleep $timeduration
exec statspack.snap(i_snap_level=>6);

I have automated statspack snapshot collection using cron job.

To limit the growth of tablespace. I run a Statspack sppuge command automatically. This purge command retains a specified number (e.g., 60) snapshots.

I can verify that statspack snapshots are being purged by looking at available snapshots, i.e, snapshots are being purged everyday.

I was hoping my tablespace disk usage will stabilize after some point but that is not the case when I look at free space using Oracle's Enterprise Manager.

What is going on, why Oracle is not reusing the deleted space (as a result of sppurge command). Any idea, how can I troubleshoot this problem.

Thanks,

Prem Received on Fri Feb 11 2005 - 09:07:10 CST