Hi, This is called block coalescing. If I recall correctly, Oracle only tries to coalesce a block if it sees that the block does have enough total free space for insert/update operation, but there is no contiguous free chunk big enough available. Also it might work the same way for expanding ITL area as well, but I havent tried it.. Tanel. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Parker, Matthew" <matthewp@xxxxxxxxxx> To: <AGUERRA@xxxxxxxxx>; "Christian Antognini" <Christian.Antognini@xxxxxxxxxxxx> Cc: <oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Wednesday, April 13, 2005 8:27 PM Subject: RE: How can I get the BBED password? > Oracle does not always reorg the rows in a block. There are different = > optimizations that oracle uses as to when certain internal block = > manipulations are performed.=20 > > -----Original Message- -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l