Re: Compressing Datafiles

In article <8cvlpc$u8$1_at_nnrp1.deja.com> flowerss_at_my-deja.com writes:
>I'm trying to think outside of the box. We have a situation were the
>Server is just about 100% full on all file systems. It takes 91 hours
>for a Cold Backup, because a 10 Base Card was ordered instead of a 100
>Base Card. Funding has held up the order of the 100 Base Card. So
>until it's backed up, I can't remove any datafiles of the databases
>that are no longer being used.
>
>Temporarily, can a Datafile be Compressed? Has anyone tried it?

I was just at the Backup and Recovery class last week and the instructor said this wasn't a good idea. The reasoning seemed a little fuzzy to me. I have a testbed so I just tried the following:

1. shutdown oracle cleanly
2. backed up the smallest .dbf file I had (~10MB)
3. gzipped the original.
4. gunzipped the original
5. restarted oracle
6. did a couple of simple queries, checked the alert log.

Seemed okay to me. This was 8.1.5, gzip 1.2.4, Solaris 2.6. I repeated with a different .dbf file, and instead used the standard compress utility. Also looked okay. Of course I'd test it alot more than that if I was going to start doing this. And I'd get a second and third opinion, and at least one from a source more reputable than USENET.

-Jim G. Received on Tue Apr 11 2000 - 00:00:00 CDT