With the way databases grow these days, planning the disk space usage is a major problem with the system administrators and DBAs. Disk space is a valuable commodity so it is very critical that wasted space be kept to a minimum.
Fragmentation of tables can be caused by several factors (i.e. HW problems, bad extent allocation, wrong use of storage parameters etc.). Because of these factors table fragmentation is the most apparent cause of wasted disk capacity. Although, the SMON background process continuously collates contiguous free extents by using a space allocation algorithm, the problem with scattering of data in disparate blocks still remains.
Most organizations are faced with improperly designed databases, so most of the time is spent in putting out fires using the band-aid approach. This approach has lead organizations to realize they need to implement full database level re-orgs.
The Performance Problem
Everyone has experienced a situation in which an application slows down after it has been in production for sometime. Unfortunately, it is not always clear why this happens. In some cases the number of online transactions has increased and/or the amount of data has multiplied. These factors alone will not cause the realized performance problem.
The problem may also be that data is scattered all over the database. Database disorganization happens when there are scattered areas of storage that are not physically contiguous. Fragmentation happens when the data is scattered in various blocks which results in wasted space thus affecting performance. There are conditions like row chaining and row migration that can cause considerable performance degradation.
Solution
WFT has developed a unique solution for a full re-org of the Oracle database, WFT On-Line Oracle Re-Organization. Unlike standard re-org techniques, this solution requires minimal downtime of the production database. Utilizing WFT proprietary techniques and leveraging hardware-based local storage replication, WFT has reduced the downtime for a large scale database from days to minutes.
WFT On-line Oracle Database Re-Org is a specialized solution for performing a complete re-organization of an Oracle database thereby optimizing capacity and performance. The result is a faster database that maximizes existing/new storage with an optimal layout.
