[PLUG] Recommended DB datafile size?

Rich Shepard rshepard at appl-ecosys.com
Mon Jun 3 21:35:34 UTC 2002


On Mon, 3 Jun 2002, Alex Daniloff wrote:

> Modern DB datafiles have nothing to do with database structure and
> tables. All databases and tables data is stored in datafile.
> Oracle, PostgreSQL, InnoDB and so on.

  Well, not to belabor the point, but (at least in postgres) one uses the
'create table' command for each table in a normalized database. They are
stored on disk as separate files, too. Used to be by name now it's by
number. Shrug.

> You can see datafile as a DB virtual filesystem. 
> My question is related to DB optimization. 
> What is better to have a couple of datafiles (virtual DB FS's) on the
> same physical partition or just a one big datafile on the same
> partition?

  If all your tables (relations) are stored in a single, large disk file my
gut tells me that you're better off keeping that file in a single
filesystem. Unless you know how the tables are stored (which ones in which
files) and how frequently the two separate files will be accessed for an
operation, one file would be the way to go.

  I may not really understand your situation, Alex. In that case, please
excuse my impractical answers.

Rich





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