HELP: reduce DBF file size?

From: UofA <emerth_at_ualberta.ca>
Date: Wed, 8 Dec 1999 15:04:02 -0700
Message-ID: <82mkkh$gv6$1@pulp.srv.ualberta.ca>

Hi there,

We have a problem with trying to resize a database file. We need to make Oracle 8i for NT 'shrink' it's system schema datafile. I have tried to use "ALTER TABLESPACE 'filename' 'SIZE', but Oracle seems to want to make a copy of the datfile as part of completing the command.

Is there a way to make Oracle simply 'prune' an existing file - removing empty extents/blocks - without actually making a copy of the file in the process?

Thanks in advance,
Eric

A bit more detail...
An new application got it's default tablespace set as SYSTEM (this was a a mistake we discovered later). We ran the app's routines to populate the database and they worked fine. So we set the app to run overnight importing data into it's Oracle tables and went home.

Next morning Oracle's SYSTEM table file had grown to fill the disk it was on - the disk is about 25 gigs. We don't have another 25 gig volume handy, so the ALTER TABLESPACE above is unworkable. Received on Wed Dec 08 1999 - 16:04:02 CST