Number of extents is irrelevant, especially with Locally Managed Tablespaces. Even in 8i I used to manage a database with huge interMedia Text indexed tables with out-of-line CLOBs. The tables and/or LOB segments had over 30,000 extents and we had subsecond response time to interMedia-type queries on the CLOBs. And that was on a Windows2k server. With LMTs I haven't worried about extents or the "fragmentation" boogey-man in a decade. Jack C. Applewhite - Database Administrator Austin I.S.D. - MIS Department 512.414.9715 (wk) / 512.935.5929 (pager) Niall Litchfield <niall.litchfield@xxxxxxxxx> Sent by: oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 03/13/2009 06:08 PM Please respond to niall.litchfield@xxxxxxxxx To joel.wittenmyer@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx cc oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject Re: Effect of number of extents on Oracle I/O performance I haven't seen what you describe since about 7.3.4, perhaps you could demonstrate what you mean so that we can try it out ourselves (I have a likely 11g candidate in mind). On Fri, Mar 13, 2009 at 10:50 PM, Joel Wittenmyer < joel.wittenmyer@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: In Oracle 8 and 9 we saw that at 1000 extents performance began to drop off. At 2K extents it leapt, laughing maniacally off a cliff. I know that 10g is supposed to handle much more than that without a problem. Tens or hundreds of thousands perhaps? Does anyone have experience with just what the new threshold might be? Or is the architecture such now that it is no longer a consideration? Thanks in Advance. Joel Wittenmyer Sr. Database Architect Sr. Data Architect HealthTrans -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l -- Niall Litchfield Oracle DBA http://www.orawin.info