Re: table extents cleanup

Nils Myklebust (Nils.Myklebust@ccmail.telemax.no) wrote: > markb@raysfood.com (Mark Blum) wrote: > :We use Informix Online 5.05. Does anyone know of 3rd party software or > :another way of doing table extents cleanup. We are currently using > :dbschema and unloading to a file, re-creating the table with larger > :numbers then re-loading the table. > ztools is coming out soon with what looks to become a realy great tool > for this purpose. > Check out http:\\\\www.ztools.com > Nils.Myklebust@ccmail.telemax.no > NM Data AS, P.O.Box 9090 Gronland, N-0133 Oslo, Norway > My opinions are those of my company I'm running both 5.x and 7.x with very, VERY hugh databases. So large in fact that unloading tables is not an option. I use ol' faithful, tbunload and tbload. This is much more reliable than unload and several orders of magnitude quicker. These tools take a binary image of Informix pages and are smart enough to consolidate multiple extents into one ( or two in some situations ) upon restore ( when you re-load an un-loaded database ). After taking a good level zero use: tbunload -t /dev/tapedev -b block_size db_name Then drop your database and use: tbload -t /dev/tapedev -b block_size -d dbspace_name db_name Afterward, restore your Logical Logging 'state', update statistics and you're all set. You may also use tbunload/tbload at the table level. This may be more practical than working on every table in your database. However, when you tbload a table back into the database after dropping it, you'll loose column defaults and null/notnull attributes. Something else to consider is once you get the database the way you want it, increase next extent size for the offending tables. This may reduce the frequency of down-time for maintenance. Good Luck, Kevin Brand kbrand@gtetel.com