On 10/25/06, VIVEK_SHARMA <VIVEK_SHARMA@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
What did you mean by the word "sparse" in your statement "when the file isn't already present, in order to prevent it from being created sparse under *nix"
What are the advantages of NOT having a sparse tempfile?
By sparse[1] I mean that the space for the file isn't actually allocated until it's used. This lets you create a 16 GB tempfile, for example, in a 2 GB filesystem... instead of getting an error during creation, it occurs later when the usage finally climbs too high. BTW, this can have rather nasty consequences if you have a controlfile and tempfile sharing the same filesystem (trust me on this one).
Last I checked, tempfiles are the only type that Oracle will create sparse (and only under *nix). You can check this by comparing the output of "ls -l" and "du -k" immediately after creation.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sparse_file
-- "I'm too sexy for my code." - Awk Sed Fred.
