coalescing free space

Hi

I`m trying to understand the idea of coalescing free space and a few things are unclear.
I have a tablespace with 66 free space 'chunks' (from dba_free_space). I was under the impression that if I ran the 'alter tablespace name coalesce' command then these free space areas would be coalesced and reduce in number, which isn`t the case. Does coalesce simply mean that oracle now knows where all the free space is and can use it more efficiently rather than reducing all the free space into larger chunks. If I want to reduce the number of free space chunks would this be achived by exporting and reimporting some of the schema objects or would a full export of the tablespace be required.

many thanks for any assistance on this subject

regards
Richard Received on Thu Jul 01 1999 - 04:38:08 CDT